FEB  16  1.918 


A 


BR  309  .P75  C.2 
Presbyterian  Church  in  the 

U.S.A.  General  Assembly. 
The  Protestant  Reformation 


V 


V^V^--  v^/^^ 


FEB  16  1918 

Protestant    Reformation 
and   Its   Influence 

1517-1917 


Addresses  Delivered  in  Connection  with  the  One  Hundred  and 

Twenty-Ninth  General  Assembly  of  the  Presbyterian 

Church  in  the  United  States  of  America  at 

Dallas,  Texas,  on  May  19  and  20,  1917 


PUBLISHED  BY 
ORDER  OF  THE  GENERAL   ASSEMBLY 


PHILADELPHIA 

THE  WESTMINSTER  PRESS 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION    5 

HISTORICAL  STATEMENT    9 

ADDRESSES: 

THE     ORIGIN    AND    PURPOSE    OF    THE    PROT- 
ESTANT  REFORMATION    21 

By  David  Schley  Schaff 

THE  REFORMATION:   A  REVIVAL  OF  RELIGION     49 
By  J.  Ross  Stevenson 

THE    REFORMATION    IN    RELATION    TO    CIVIL 

AND  RELIGIOUS  LIBERTY 59 

By  William  Henky  Robeets 

MESSAGES  FROM  LUTHER  FOR  OUR  DAY 71 

By  Henry  Sloane  Coffin 

THE   INFLUENCE  OF  THE  REFORMATION 85 

By  Feederick  W.  Loetscheb 

THE  REFORMATION  AND  HUMANISM.  . 109 

By  William  R.  Faemee 

THE  REFORMATION  AND  SOME  VITAL  AND  CON- 
STRUCTIVE ELEMENTS  OF  MODERN  LIFE 117 

By  William  McKibbin 

THE  REFORMERS  AS  MEN  OF  THOUGHT  AND 

ACTION 127 

By  Andrew  C.  Zenos 

THE  PROTESTANT  REFORMATION  AND  THE 

CHRISTIAN  LIFE 147 

By  William  H.  Black 

3 


INTRODUCTION 


The  General  Assembly  of  1916,  in  session  in  Atlantic 
City,  took  the  following  action  providing  for  the  cele- 
bration of  the  four  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  Pro- 
testant Eeformation,  which  began  with  the  posting  of 
the  Ninety-five  Theses  on  the  church  door  in  Witten- 
berg by  Martin  Luther,  October  31,  1517 : 

"Whereas,  The  four  hundredth  anniversary  of  the 
Protestant  Keformation  occurs  in  1917;  and 

"Whereas,  The  Churches  constituting  the  Council 
of  the  Eeformed  Churches  holding  the  Presbyterian 
System  represent  historically  one  great  branch  of  the 
Christian  Church  of  the  Eeformation.    Therefore, 

^'Resolved,  That  the  Council  recommends  to  the  sev- 
eral supreme  judicatories  the  holding  of  suitable  anni- 
versary services  for  the  purpose  of  emphasizing  the 
great  principles  of  the  Eeformation  of  the  sixteenth 
century/'— Minutes,  1916,  page  309. 

The  General  Assembly  also  adopted  the  following: 

''Resolved,  That,  in  connection  with  whatever  celebra- 
tion of  the  Luther  Anniversary  may  be  arranged  for  1917. 
all  Presbyterian  churches  be  called  upon  to  commemorate 
the  nailing  of  the  Theses  on  the  door  of  the  Wittenberg 
Church,  by  making  a  special  offering,  on  October  28, 
1917,  this  offering  to  be  sent  to  the  (College)  Board 
for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  departments  of  English 

5 


6  INTRODUCTION 

Bible  in  Presbyterian  colleges." — Minutes,  1916,  page 
161. 

''Resolved,  That  in  order  to  carry  out  the  resolution 
regarding  the  anniversary  of  the  Protestant  Eeformation, 
it  is  recommended  that  the  Moderator  appoint  a  com- 
mittee of  five,  three  ministers  and  two  elders,  to  co- 
operate with  other  committees." — Minutes,  1916,  page 
122. 

In  accordance  with  this  action,  the  Moderator  of  the 
Assembl}^,  John  A.  Marquis,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  appointed  the 
following  committee :  Ministers :  Eev.  David  Schley 
Schaff,  D.D.,  Chairman;  Rev.  Frank  C.  McKean,  D.D.; 
Eev.  William  Henry  Eoberts,  D.D.,  LL.D.  Euling 
Elders :  Mr.  William  H.  Scott  and  Mr.  Lansing  C.  Wet- 
more. 

The  Assembly  of  1917,  in  session  in  Dallas,  set  apart 
the  hour  of  11:30-12:30  A.  M.,  May  19,  for  a  com- 
memoration by  itself  of  the  Eeformation.  The  com- 
mittee's report  was  adopted  and  an  address  was  made 
by  its  chairman.  Dr.  David  Schley  Schaff,  on  "The 
Origin  and  Purpose  of  the  Eeformation." 

The  report  stated,  among  other  things,  that  the  com- 
mittee had  prepared  and  sent  out  to  all  ministers  of 
our  communion  a  leaflet  containing  a  brief  presentation 
of  the  course  of  the  Eeformation,  together  with  a  list 
of  books  suitable  for  consultation  and  two  lists  of  topics 
for  possible  series  of  lectures  on  the  subject;  that  it 
had  communicated  with  the  stated  clerks  of  all  the 
presbyteries  urging  the  presbyteries  to  arrange  for  cele- 
brations in  the  autumn  of  1917,  and  had  put  itself  in 


INTRODUCTION  7 

communication  with  the  committees  appointed  by  other 
denominations.  It  had  secured  the  issue  by  the  Board 
of  Publication  of  an  ehiborate  program  for  use  by  the 
churches  in  such  celebrations,  and  the  offer,  through  the 
Board's  depositories,  of  Bohmer's  biography  of  Luther 
at  a  greatly  reduced  price.  It  also  provided  for  the 
preparation  and  issue  of  a  pageant  of  the  Reformation. 
The  Assembly  further  appointed  four  popular  meet- 
ings in  commemoration  of  the  Eeformation  to  be  held 
during  its  sessions,  on  Sunday  evening.  May  20,  in  four 
different  churches  in  Dallas,  Texas,  with  the  following 
chairmen  and  speakers  at  each: 

First  Baptist  Church 

Chairman :  Frank  C  McKean,  D.D.,  Des  Moines,  Iowa. 
Speakers:  J.  Boss  Stevenson,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President 
of  Princeton  Theological  Seminary;  William  Henry 
Eoberts,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Stated  Clerk  of  the  General 
Assembly. 

Central  Baptist  Church 

Chairman :  Elder  William  H.  Scott,  of  Philadelphia. 
Speakers:  Henry  S.  Coffin,  D.D.,  pastor  of  the  Madi- 
son Avenue  Presb3'terian  Church,  New  York  City,  and 
professor  in  Union  Theological  Seminary;  Frederick  W. 
Loetscher,  D.D.,  professor  in  Princeton  Theological 
Seminary. 

First  Methodist  Church 

Chairman :  J.  Wilbur  Chapman,  D.D.,  Moderator  of 
the  General  Assembly.    Speakers :    William  R.  Farmer, 


8  INTRODUCTION 

D.D.,  professor  in  Western  Theological  Seminary,  Pitts- 
burgh; William  McKibbin,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President  of 
Lane  Theological  Seminary,   Cincinnati. 

I 
First  Presbyterian  Church^  South 

Chairman:  John  A.  Marquis,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  retiring 
Moderator.  Speakers:  Andrew  C.  Zenos,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
professor  in  McCormick  Theological  Seminary,  Chicago; 
William  H.  Black,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President  of  Missouri 
Valley  College,  Marshall,  Missouri. 

The  topics  assigned  to  each  meeting  were  "The  Ee- 
formation"  and  "The  Influence  of  the  Eeformation.'^ 

The  congregations  gathered  at  these  meetings  were 
large,  and  the  interest  shown  in  the  subject  of  the 
Eeformation  was  warm  and  sympathetic. 

The  General  Assembly  instructed  the  committee  to 
edit  a  memorial  volume  containing  all  the  addresses 
above  referred  to,  and  directed  the  Board  of  Publication 
to  publish  the  volume. 


HISTORICAL   STATEMENT 


It  is  proper  here  to  give  a  brief  sketch  of  the  prin- 
cijoles  and  historic  progress  of  the  Eeformation. 

I.  The  Medieval  Church  system  against  which  the 
Eeformation  was  a  protest.  To  the  doctrines  of  the 
Trinity,  the  deity,  incarnation,  atonement,  and  resur- 
rection of  Christ,  the  divine  origin  of  the  Scriptures,  and 
the  life  beyond  the  grave,  the  Church  during  the  course 
of  the  Middle  Ages  added  dogmas  and  practices  which 
to  the  Reformers  appeared  unstated  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  were  a  subversion  of  some  of  its  fundamental 
principles.  Among  these  unscriptural  doctrines  and 
practices  were  the  following : 

1.  The  papal  monarchy.  The  pope  as  the  vicar  of 
Christ  claimed  headship  over  the  entire  Church  on  earth, 
with  supreme  authority  in  the  Church  and  also  over  the 
nations,  with  right  to  set  up  and  depose  princes  and 
monarchs. 

2.  The  priesthood.  The  priesthood  claimed  the  right 
of  deciding  the  eternal  destiny  of  every  mortal  man. 
This  right  was  exercised  through  the  sacraments,  de- 
clared to  be  the  necessary  channels  of  grace  and  eternal 
life.  Apart  from  these  sacraments,  it  was  taught,  there 
can  be  no  forgiveness  of  sins  and  no  entrance  into  the 
fellowship  of  Christ;  the  priest  alone  has  authority  to 

9 


10  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

administer  them;  moreover,  his  administration  invar- 
iably makes  them  efficient. 

In  practice  two  errors  of  prime  importance  followed : 
The  individual  was  debarred  from  free  access  to  Christ, 
such  as,  for  example,  the  blind  man  had;  and  the  lay 
Christian  had  no  right  to  interpret  the  commands  of 
Christ  as  laid  down  in  the  Scriptures.  It  belonged  to 
the  Church  to  interpret  and  make  known  these  com- 
mands. By  the  Church  we  mean  the  pope,  bishops,  and 
priesthood,  that  is,  the  hierarchy.  The  Scriptures  were 
withheld  from  the  laity. 

3.  The  sacraments.  The  sacraments  were  increased 
to  seven,  whereas  the  New  Testament  records  only  bap- 
tism and  the  Lord's  Supper  as  appointed  by  Christ. 
One  of  the  seven  sacraments  introduced  was  marriage. 
By  this  decision,  the  legitimacy  of  children  and  the 
sanctity  of  the  marriage  bond  was  made  dependent  upon 
the  priest,  who  alone  had  authority  to  constitute  the 
bond. 

4.  Transubsta7itiaiion  and  the  sacrifice  of  the  Mass. 
By  the  former  the  bread  and  wine  at  the  words  of  the 
priest  are  changed  into  the  very  body  and  blood  of 
Christ.  The  popular  statement  ran  that  the  priest 
"created  God."  In  the  Mass  a  true  though  bloodless 
sacrifice,  repeating  the  act  on  Calvary,  is  said  to  occur 
every  time  the  priest  consecrates  the  bread  and  wine, 
and  it  is  efficacious  for  persons  absent  as  well  as  those 
who  partake  of  the  communion. 

5.  Withdrawal  of  the  cup.     The  cup  was  withdrawn 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  11 

from  the  laity  in  direct  opposition  to  our  Lord's  words, 
'^Drink  ye  all,  of  it." 

6.  Penance.  The  sacrament  of  penance  was  made  to 
consist  of  four  distinct  parts:  contrition  of  heart,  con- 
fession to  the  priest,  works  of  satisfaction  prescribed 
by  the  priest,  and  absolution  by  the  priest.  To  receive 
pardon  from  God  the  offender  must  go  through  all 
these  four  processes  and  to  omit  any  one  of  them  is 
fatal.  The  human  priest  is  essential  to  the  forgiveness 
of  sin.  It  was  the  exercise  of  these  principles  which 
provoked,  in  1517,  the  first  act  of  the  Eeformation. 

7.  Withdraiual  of  the  jmlpit.  In  the  churches  the 
pulpit  was  supplanted  by  the  altar  and  the  confessional 
box. 

8.  Purgatory.  This  doctrine  places  a  realm  between 
this  world  and  heaven  to  which  go  all  souls  which 
are  redeemed,  and  yet,  without  further  purgation,  are 
not  fit  for  heaven.  The  most  pernicious  feature  of 
purgatory  is  that  the  duration  of  the  chastisement 
depends  on  the  pope  and  priesthood.  The  pope  has 
power  to  release  souls  at  his  will  so  that  they 
go  immediately  to  heaven.  Sixtus  IV,  in  1476,  an- 
nounced that  payments  of  money  made  by  the  living 
might  insure  the  shortening  of  the  pangs  of  the  de- 
parted in  purgatory.  Masses  for  the  dead  provided  for 
in  wills  or  paid  for  by  the  living  gave  ease  to  such  souls. 

9.  The  worship  of  the  Virgin  Mai^y,  saints,  and  relics. 
Great  cathedrals  were  dedicated  to  Mary,  called  "the 
queen  of  mercy,"  as  Jesus  was  called  "the  king  of  jus- 
tice." 


12  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

10.  The  enforced  celibacy  of  the  clergy. 

11.  The  Inquisition.  By  this  institution^  established 
by  the  papacy  in  1215,  the  right  of  liberty  and  even  to 
life  on  earth  was  denied  to  the  religious  dissenter.  Ac- 
cording to  theory,  the  Church  tribunal  never  went  far- 
ther than  to  execute  the  sentence  of  lifelong  imprison- 
ment ;  but,  by  turning  the  heretic  over  to  the  civil  magis- 
trate and  threatening  the  civil  magistrate  with  spiritual 
punishments  unless  he  executed  the  heretic,  the  Churcli 
became  responsible  directly  for  the  death  by  burning  of 
thousands  of  heretics.  The  papacy  was  therefore  guilty 
of  fomenting  hatred  against  heretics  and  inciting  wars 
against  dissenting  sects. 

These  unscriptural  doctrines  and  practices,  almost 
without  exception,  were  held  up  to  severest  condemna- 
tion by  John  Wyclif ,  and  many  of  them  were  condemned 
by  Marsilius  of  Padua,  who  preceded  him,  and  by  John 
Huss  and  Jerome  of  Prague.  These  men  have  won  a 
good  report  through  the  approbation  of  the  Eeformers, 
but  they  stood  condemned  as  diabolical  men  and  arch- 
heretics  when  the  Eeformation  was  started. 

II.  Origin  and  Progress  of  the  Reformation.  The 
Ninety-five  Theses  posted  in  Wittenberg,  October  31, 
1517,  were  a  protest  against  the  sale  of  indulgences. 
An  indulgence  was  a  pardon  for  sins  granted  by  a  priest. 
By  order  of  Pope  Leo  X  the  sale  was  being  methodically 
carried  on  in  German}^,  a  portion  of  the  proceeds  going 
into  the  papal  treasury.  Little  tickets,'  bought  by  the 
people,  entitled  souls  in  purgatory  to  immediate  passage 
to  heaven  and  insured  purchasers  of  the  pardon  of  sins. 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  13 

Luther's  Theses  flew  through  Europe.  James  Anthony 
Froude  has  called  October  31,  1517,  "the  most  memor- 
able day  in  modern  European  history."  The  Theses 
proved  to  be  the  bold  stroke  which  brought  spiritual 
liberty  to  parts  of  Europe  and  liberated  the  Gospels 
and  apostles  from  the  bondage  in  which  they  had  been 
held  for  centuries  by  priestly  traditions  and  enactments. 
In  1517  Luther  did  not  dream  of  being  a  reformer 
of  the  Church.  He  supposed  he  was  calling  attention 
to  an  evil  about  which  the  pope  was  not  informed  and 
which  the  Church  authorities  would  quickly  repudiate. 
But  the  very  first  of  the  Theses  had  in  it  the  power  and 
the  dynamic  of  the  new  movement.  It  was  an  immediate 
appeal  to  "Our  Lord  and  Master,  Jesus  Christ,"  and 
the  Scriptures.  It  was  the  allegiance  to  Christ's  spoken 
word,  too,  which  carried  Luther  on  from  step  to  step 
and  gave  him  courage  to  face  the  assaults  and  threats 
of  theologians,  pope,  and  emperor.  Gradually  he  repu- 
diated all  the  medieval  errors  and  abuses  enumerated 
above.  With  undaunted  boldness  he  continued  in  his 
course,  braving  the  papal  bull  and  the  ban  of  outlawry 
pronounced  upon  him  by  the  emperor.  In  open  day- 
light, in  1520,  he  burned  the  bull,  which  declared  him 
a  heretic,  and  in  1521,  on  trial  before  the  emperor  and 
the  imperial  diet  at  Worms,  he  refused  to  recant  what 
his  conscience  bade  him  was  truth.  Confined  in  the 
Wartburg,  he  translated  the  New  Testament  into  Ger- 
man. In  1525  he  was  married.  Four  years  before  this,  he 
had  written  a  treatise  calling  upon  those  who  were 
monks  and  nuns  against  their  will  to  abandon  the  con- 


14  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

vents.  Supported  by  Melanchthon,  by  his  prince,  the 
duke  of  Saxony,  and  by  other  sympathizers,  he  gave  the 
Eeformation  to  Germany  and  to  the  world.  He  stated 
all  the  doctrinal  principles  of  Protestantism  and  set 
the  example  for  other  Eeformers  in  his  catechism  and 
hymns,  in  his  preaching,  and  in  his  call  to  the  State  to 
provide  universal  education.  In  judging  Luther's  services 
it  must  be  remembered  that  John  Calvin  did  not  espouse 
the  new  views  till  1533,  sixteen  years  after  Luther  had 
posted  up  the  Theses;  that  John  Knox  did  not  fully 
begin  his  work  in  Scotland  till  1560,  forty-three  years 
after  that  event;  and  that  the  early  Eeformers  in 
England  all  derived  their  teachings  from  Wittenberg. 

The  leading  Eeformer  at  the  side  of  Luther  was  John 
Calvin,  who,  after  a  brilliant  course  in  the  study  of 
law,  was  "suddenly  converted"  to  the  new  views  in 
1533,  and,  obliged  to  flee  from  France,  settled  in  Geneva 
in  1536.  He  outlived  Luther  by  eighteen  years  and  died 
in  1564.  With  the  vision  and  organizing  power  of  a 
statesman,  he  established  a  Christian  commonwealth. 
The  university  which  he  founded  became  the  chief  cen- 
ter of  letters  and  law  for  France,  Holland,  and  Great 
Britain.  He  expounded  the  Scriptures  in  scholarly  and 
critical  commentaries.  He  wrote  the  chief  work  on 
systematic  theology  produced  by  the  Eeformers.  He 
did  what  Luther  did  not  do.  He  gained  the  far  western 
states  of  Europe,  Holland,  England,  and  Scotland,  per- 
manently for  Protestantism.  From  these  states  and 
France  came  the  first  Protestant  colonists  to  America, 
the  Huguenots,  the  Dutch,  the  Puritans,  as  also  the 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  15 

Palatine  Germans.  Geneva  became  the  hearthstone  of 
representative  government  in  Church  and  in  State. 

Ulrich  Zwingli,  1484-1531,  who  died  on  the  field  of 
battle,  was  the  second  leader  to  espouse  the  movement 
for  reformation  in  the  Church.  A  priest  and  a  great 
preacher,  he  gave  the  Eeformation  to  Zurich,  which,  like 
Geneva,  became  a  refuge  for  persecuted  Protestants  from 
England  and  Italy.  In  some  respects  Zwingli  antici- 
pated our  modern  theology,  by  extending  salvation  to 
unbaptized  infants,  children  of  heathen  as  well  as  of 
Christian  parents. 

In  France  the  king  opposed  the  new  movement,  and 
the  Huguenots,  as  the  French  Protestants  were  called, 
were  subjected  to  massacre  on  St.  Bartholomew's  Day, 
1572,  and  to  repeated  wars  until,  in  1685,  they  were 
denied  all  toleration  by  Louis  XIV. 

In  Holland  the  Lutheran  views  early  took  root,  but 
were  supplanted  by  the  Genevan  type  of  the  Eeforma- 
tion, with  William  the  Silent  as  leader.  The  awful 
barbarities  of  Philip  II  and  the  Spanish  Inquisition 
have  been  told  by  Motley,  who  gives  the  graduated  scale 
of  prices  at  which  pardon  for  the  worst  crimes  might  be 
bought. 

In  England  the  progress  of  the  Eeformation  was  now 
encouraged,  now  checked,  by  the  reigning  sovereigns, 
Henry  VIII,  Edward  VI,  Mary  Tudor,  and  Elizabeth; 
its  type  was  finally  decided  to  a  large  degree  by  Eliza- 
beth's preferences.  Cambridge  was  the  first  hotbed  of  the 
new  views,  but  Tyndale,  who  received  his  training  there, 
fled  to  Germany  to  put  his  translation  of  the  Greek 


16  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

Testament  into  print  (1526).  Under  Mary  Tudor, 
1553-1558,  a  great  company  of  martyrs  testified  to  their 
faith  in  the  flames,  unlearned  men  and  men  of  learning, 
mechanics  and  men  of  highest  ecclesiastical  standing, 
such  as  Bishops  Hooper  and  Latimer  and  Archbishop 
Cranmer. 

In  Scotland  the  Eeformation  views  were  first  preached 
by  men  like  Patrick  Hamilton  and  George  Wishart, 
both  of  whom  suffered  death  for  their  convictions.  After 
a  period  of  exile  in  England  and  in  Geneva,  John  Knox 
returned  to  Scotland,  and,  with  Edinburgh  as  his  parish, 
made  permanent  the  Eeformation  which  had  been  begun 
by  enactments  of  the  nobles  in  the  National  Covenant. 
Before  his  death  in  1572,  Knox  gave  to  his  people  the 
First  Scotch  Confession,  the  First  Book  of  Church  Dis- 
cipline, and  the  so-called  Liturgy. 

Of  other  Eeformers  whose  names  have  not  been  men- 
tioned, the  most  noteworthy  were  Melanchthon,  Bucer  of 
Strasburg,  OEcolampadius  of  Basel,  and  two  men  of  the 
later  generation,  Bullinger  of  Zurich,  and  Beza,  Calvin's 
learned  and  able  successor  in  Geneva.  Peter  Martyr  and 
Oehino  came  from  Italy.  The  Eeformation  in  the 
greater  part  of  Germany,  Denmark,  Sweden,  Norway, 
and  part  of  Hungary,  was  Lutheran.  The  rest  of  the 
Protestant  world  was  called  Eeformed. 

The  Eeformers  were  one  in  purpose,  and  in  teachings 
were  in  almost  absolute  agreement.  Their  differences,  as  in 
regard  to  the  Lord's  Supper  and  the  use  of  a  prescribed 
liturgy,  were,  as  we  look  back,  of  small  concern  in  com- 
parison with  the  unanimity  with  which  they  insisted 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  17 

upon  the  Scriptures  as  every  man's  Book  and  the  final 
source  of  religious  authority,  the  marriage  of  the  clergy, 
the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith,  withdrawal  of  the 
sacerdotal  element  from  the  priesthood  and  the  sacri- 
ficial element  from  the  Lord's  Supper,  and  the  priest- 
hood of  all  believers.  The  teachings  of  the  Eeformers, 
all  of  which  they  insisted  w^ere  based  upon  the  Scrip- 
tures, were  incorporated  in  the  Protestant  Confessions, 
beginning  with  the  Augsburg  Confession  of  1530  and 
including  the  Second  Helvetic  Confession  of  1566,  the 
Galilean  Confession,  1559,  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of 
Eeligion,  1563,  the  First  Scotch  Confession,  1560,  the 
Heidelberg  Catechism,  1563,  and  the  Canons  of  Dort, 
1619.  They  were  brought  to  a  close  by  the  Westminster 
Confession  of  1648. 

The  Council  of  Trent  restated  and,  with  some  modifi- 
cation, reaffirmed  the  tenets  and  usages  of  the  Medieval 
Church.  Its  canon  and  decrees,  1563,  became  the  official 
teachings  of  Koman  Catholicism  as  opposed  to  Prot- 
estantism. To  these  dogmas  were  added  in  1854  and 
1860,  under  the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX,  the  dogmas  of 
the  immaculate  conception  of  the  Virgin  Mary  and 
papal  infallibility. 

The  era  of  the  Eeformation  beginning  with  the  post- 
ing of  the  Theses  in  1517  was  concluded  in  1648  with 
the  Peace  of  Westphalia,  which  brought  peace  after  the 
ravages  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  and  recognized 
the  divisions  of  Europe  into  Protestant  and  Eoman 
Catholic  nations — For  the  Committee.  David  Schley 
8 chaff ,  Chairman. 


THE  ADDEESS  BEFOEE  THE  GENEEAL 
ASSEMBLY 

The  address  was  delivered  before  the  General  Assem- 
bly, Saturday,  May  19,  at  11 :30  A.  M.  Eev.  Wallace 
Eadcliffe,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  pastor  of  the  New  York  Avenue 
Presbyterian  Church,  Washington,  D.  C,  and  a  former 
Moderator  of  the  Assembly,  presided.  In  introducing 
the  speaker  Dr.  Eadcliffe  spoke  of  the  importance  of  the 
Eeformation  and  the  distinction  of  the  speaker's  father, 
Dr.  Philip  Schaff,  as  a  Church  historian. 


THE  ORIGIN  AND  PURPOSE  OF  THE 
PROTESTANT  REFORMATION 

BY 

DAVID  SCHLEY  SCHAFF,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

Mr.  Moderator,  Members  of  the  Assemhly,  Ladies,  and 
Gentlemen: 
The  Protestant  Reformation,  the  four  hundredth 
anniversary  of  which  we  are  now  commemorating,  is 
the  most  memorable  event  since  the  days  of  the  apostles. 
It  marked  the  close  of  the  ]\Iiddle  Ages  and  ushered 
in  these  modern  centuries.  It  was  a  protest  against 
the  ecclesiastical  system  built  up  by  the  practice  of  able 
pontiffs  and  justified  by  the  acute  reasoning  of  the 
Schoolmen.  It  was  more  than  a  protest:  It  was  a 
reproclamation  of  the  gospel.  It  announced  emanci- 
pation from  the  papal  monarchy.  It  brought  release 
from  bondage  to  the  priesthood,  v/hich  claimed  as  a 
monopoly  the  function  of  mediating  between  the  soul 
and  God.  It  gave  the  Scriptures  to  the  common  man. 
It  republished  salvation  by  free  grace.  It  asserted  for 
all  alike  the  right  to  go  at  once  for  pardon  and  life 
to  the  chief  Bishop  and  Shepherd  of  our  souls.  It  pro- 
claimed the  sovereignty  of  the  individual  man.  Setting 
aside  the  monastic  ideal,  it  taught  once  more  the  true  use 
of  the  world  and  the  dignity  of  all  legitimate  human 
occupations;   it  taught  that  every   creature  of   God  is 

21 


22  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

good,  and  nothing  to  be  despised,  if  it  be  received  with 
thanksgiving. 

The  impulse  which  gave  the  Eeformation  birth  was 
wholly  religious.  Social  and  economic  unrest  prevailed 
in  the  sixteenth  century  as  in  the  twentieth.  Social 
and  economic  changes  were  engaging  the  dreams  and 
speculation  of  the  age — not  all  Utopian.  Social  and 
economic  betterments  followed  the  preaching  of  the 
Eeformers.  But,  in  the  first  instance,  and  all  through, 
the  Eeformers  had  it  as  their  controlling  aim  to  rean- 
nounce  the  plain  way  whereby  a  man  may  be  just  with 
God. 

Starting  in  Wittenberg,  the  movement  spread  to 
Switzerland,  where  it  had  Zwingli  and  Calvin  foi  its 
chief  leaders.  It  extended  to  Holland  and  crossed  the 
channel  to  England  and  Scotland.  In  Denmark,  Swe- 
den, and  Norway,  the  new  system  completely  replaced 
the  old.  In  Hungary  it  divided  the  population.  In 
France  it  promised  well,  but  met  with  disfavor  from 
the  king,  and  by  the  Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Day 
and  bloody  wars  was  almost  blotted  out.  In  Spain  and 
Italy  the  Inquisition  soon  crushed  the  seeds  of  the  rising 
faith.  The  extensive  spread  of  the  uprising  shows  how 
widely  religious  dissatisfaction  prevailed.  But  for  the 
divisions  among  Protestants,  which  we  lament,  the 
principles  of  the  Eeformation  would  have  been  planted 
in  a  wider  area  than  the  land  which  proved  to  be  a 
permanent  soil  for  them.  Save  for  these  divisions,  there 
probably  would  have  been  no  Thirty  Years'  War,  no 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  23 

century-long  struggle  in  England,  no  harrowing  of  the 
Covenanters. 

Like  the  apostles  of  the  first  century  and  the  School- 
men of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  Eeformers  form  a  group 
by  themselves.  Belonging  to  different  nations  and 
speaking  different  languages,  they  were  united  in  a 
common  purpose  and  remarkably  agreed  in  their  teach- 
ings. They  had  no  thought  of  constituting  a  new 
Church.  Their  purpose  was  to  clear  the  Medieval 
Church  of  corruptions  and  once  more  conform  it  fully 
to  its  charter,  the  New  Testament.  To  the  question 
once  put  to  a  Protestant,  "Wliere  was  your  Church  be- 
fore Luther?"  the  reply  was  made,  and  aptly,  "Where 
was  your  face  before  it  was  washed  ?"  The  aim  of  the 
Eeformers  was  to  cleanse.  No  new  truth  did  they  invent 
any  more  than  Columbus  and  the  Cabots  created  a  new 
world.  The  Italian  navigators  found  the  old  lands  lying 
under  the  western  sun  and  made  them  known.  What 
the  Eeformers  did  was  to  open  the  old  Book  and  make 
known  what  they  found  written  therein.  This,  at  least, 
they  professed  to  do. 

But,  though  their  aim  was  one,  the  Eeformers  were 
distinguished  by  personal  traits  and  also  by  the  specific 
contributions  which  they  made  to  the  main  movement. 

To  Martin  Luther  it  was  given  to  be  the  leader  of 
the  Eeformation  and  to  state  its  leading  Biblical  prin- 
ciples. His  life  was  full  of  dramatic  scenes :  his  sudden 
withdrawal  from  the  world  in  favor  of  the  "religious 
life";  his  visit  to  Eome;  the  posting  of  the  Ninety-five 
Theses;  the  appearance  before  Cajetan;  the  colloquy  at 


24  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

Leipzig;  the  burning  of  the  papal  bull  at  Wittenberg; 
the  trial  before  the  emperor  at  Worms ;  the  confinement 
in  the  Wartburg;  the  meeting  with  Zwingli  at  Marburg 
in  1529.  He  gave  to  his  people — ^to  follow  the  Catholic 
historian^  Dollinger — what  no  other  single  man  gave  to 
a  people :  the  Bible,  the  catechism,  and  the  hymn  book ; 
and  in  these  respects  he  set  an  example  to  the  other 
Reformers.  He  was  the  strongest  of  the  strong.  He 
felt  the  full  onset  of  the  papal  opposition.  Yet  no- 
where was  he  more  himself  than  in  the  home,  trans- 
lating "^sop's  Fables"  for  his  children  and  praying  at 
the  deathbed  of  his  little  daughter,  Lena,  weeping  as  if 
his  frame  would  be  shaken  to  pieces.  After  the  Diet 
of  Worms  he  could  write,  "If  I  had  a  hundred  heads, 
they  should  be  all  cut  off  before  I  would  yield  up  my 
conscience."  On  the  other  hand,  his  letters  to  his  wife 
are  full  of  tenderness,  and  parents  were  never  shown 
more  filial  devotion  by  a  distinguished  son  than  Martin 
Luther  gave  to  his  old  father  and  mother.  It  is  one  of 
the  noblest  of  his  traits  that  he  was  never  spoiled  by 
honors,  never  forgot  his  lowly  origin.  "I  am  a  real  peas- 
ant," he  used  to  say.  "My  father  and  grandfather  and 
all  my  forefathers  were  peasants." 

Ulrich  Zwingli,  brought  up  in  the  humanistic  cul- 
ture, was  as  firm  as  Luther.  It  was  characteristic  of 
him,  as  later  of  Calvin,  that  he  used  the  State  to  help 
the  new  views  to  prevalence.  As  a  patriot,  he  died  on 
the  field  of  battle.  The  strictest  of  the  Eeformers  in 
his  view  of  divine  predestination,  he  was  yet. the  mildest 
of  them  all  in  the  application  of  divine  mercy,  extend- 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  25 

ing  salvation  to  all  children  dying  in  infancy,  heathen 
or  Christian,  baptized  or  nnbaptized. 

John  Calvin,  exile  from  the  land  of  his  birth,  made 
Geneva  the  bulwark  of  Protestant  liberties  and  the  out- 
post of  free  education.  With  a  strong  hand,  sometimes 
gloved  with  steel,  he  established  a  Christian  common- 
wealth. He  died  in  surroundings  solemn  and  august. 
He  did  what  Luther  did  not  do.  He  won  the  peoples 
of  far  western  Europe  permanently  for  the  Eeforma- 
tion,  and,  either  through  his  efforts  or  through  his  dis- 
ciples, has  proceeded  the  representative  form  of  Church 
government.  Upon  him  Eenan  pronounced  the  judg- 
ment that  "he  was  the  most  Christian  man  of  his  age." 

In  England  the  new  views  won  against  the  old,  lost, 
and  won  again,  until,  under  Elizabeth  and  by  the  defeat 
of  the  Armada,  England  was  established  as  a  Protestant 
nation.  But  not  without  "times  both  sharp  and  bloody," 
as  Heylin  put  it.  Martyrs  form  a  bright  cloud  of  wit- 
nesses. One  of  these  witnesses,  William  Tyndale,  was 
strangled  and  burnt  at  Vilvorde  for  having  dared  to 
translate  the  New  Testament  into  English.  One  of  the 
chief  heirlooms  handed  down  from  that  age,  is  the  say- 
ing of  Bishop  Latimer :  "Play  the  man,  ]\Iaster  Pidley, 
we  shall  this  day  light  such  a  candle  in  England  as  by 
God's  grace  shall  never  be  put  out." 

In  the  northern  kingdom,  the  land  of  the  kirk  and 
the  covenants,  Knox,  in  the  spirit  of  John  the  Baptist, 
denounced  the  introduction  of  a  single  Mass  into  the 
realm  as  more  fearful  than  the  landing  of  ten  thousand 
armed  men.     Over  his  grave  the  regent  might  fitly  say, 


y 


2G  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

"Here  lies  the  man  who  never  feared  the  face  of  man." 
To  all  these  men  Protestant  peoples  owe  a  debt.  They 
opened  a  new  religious  era;  they  gave  the  Bible  to  the 
people;  they  taught  justification  by  faith  alone;  they 
laid  the  foundation  of  popular  institutions;  and  it  is 
fair  to  say  that  if  you  want  to  read  the  chapter  of 
growing  religious  liberty,  the  chapter  of  popular  intel- 
ligence, the  chapter  of  civil  liberties  based  on  the  dignity 
of  the  individual  man,  if  you  want  to  read  the  chapter 
of  enterprise  in  commerce  and  invention,  you  must  go 
to  the  lands  which  stopped  to  listen  to  the  voices  of 
Luther  and  Calvin,  Zwingli  and  Beza,  Latimer  and 
Knox. 

When  the  Eeformation  came,  it  was  like  a  bolt  out  of 
a  clear  sky.  This  does  not  mean  that  there  was  not 
religious  unrest  in  Europe.  It  does  not  ignore  the  pre- 
monitions and  presentiments  of  doctrinal  reform  voiced 
by  Marsilius  of  Padua,  Wyclif,  Huss,  and  Savonarola, 
and  John  of  Wcsel  and  John  Wesscl  along  the  lower 
Ehine.  John  Wyclif  anticipated  the  movement  of  the 
sixteenth  century  by  setting  aside  the  doctrine  of  tran- 
substantiation  and  almost  all  the  medieval  dogmas  whicli 
the  Protestant  Peformers  renounced.  John  Huss  was 
burned  to  death.  Both  of  these  men  pronounced  cer- 
tain popes  antichrists  and  defined  the  Church  as  the 
body  of  the  elect.  Wyclif  gave  the  Scriptures  in  the 
vernacular  of  his  people.  Huss  accomplislied  more, 
perhaps,  by  his  death  than  was  ever  accomplished  by  the 
death  of  any  other  mere  human  l)eing.  In  noble  words 
he  expressed  the  watchword  of  religious  sincerity  and 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  27 

l^rogTcss  when  he  said,  "Not  custom  are  we  to  follow, 
but  the  law  of  Christ  and  the  truth."  A  splendid  testi- 
mony was  given  by  Savonarola  when,  dying  on  the 
square  of  Florence,  he  rej^lied  to  the  words  of  the  bishop 
of  Vasona,  "I  separate  thee  from  the  Church  militant 
and  the  Church  triumphant/'  with  the  words,  "Nay,  not 
from  the  Church  triumphant."  Wessel  anticipated  the 
coming  movement  when  he  declared :  "The  Church  cau 
not  err,  but  what  is  the  Church?  It  is  the  communiou 
of  saints,  to  which  all  true  believers  belong,  who  are  bound 
by  one  faith,  one  hope,  one  love  to  Christ." 

A  noble  body  of  men  were  these  reformers  before  the 
Eeformation,  but  no  general  uprising  followed  their 
teachings.  The  Church  went  on  after  they  were  dead 
as  it  had  gone  on  before,  if  we  except  the  movement 
in  the  remote  kingdom  of  Bohemia.  When  Luther  be- 
gan his  work,  he  was  independent  of  them  all.  To  him 
they  were  all  heretics.  He  had  not  read  their  writings. 
From  them  he  did  not  get  his  message.  His  career  was 
not  the  last  act  fulfilling  a  drama.    It  opened  a  drama. 

When  the  Eeformation  came  it  came  from  a  most 
unexpected  quarter.  It  did  not  arise  among  the  peoples 
of  the  South,  moved  by  those  impulses  which  gave  to 
culture  and  art  a  new  birth,  and  to  the  study  of  phil- 
osophy and  statecraft  a  fresh  impetus.  It  did  not  arise 
with  the  prelates  of  the  Clnircli,  the  presumed  guar- 
dians of  apostolic  teaching  and  the  infallible  superin- 
tendents of  Christian  progress.  It  did  not  originate  in 
the  central  seat  of  western  Christendoui,  hallowed  by  the 
blood  of  early  Christian  martyrs,  the  goal  of  genera- 


28  THE    PR0TE8TANT    REFORMATION 

tions  of  pious  pilgrims,  the  throne  of  the  vicar  of  Christ. 
It  originated  among  that  people  of  the  North  which 
in  Eome  and  Italy  was  called  a  race  of  barbarians  and 
beasts.  It  originated  in  an  obscure  town — as  it  were  in 
another  Nazareth — and,  as  if  further  to  confound  the 
calculations  of  men,  it  was  proclaimed  by  a  simple  monk 
of  lowly  origin. 

Nor  was  there  any  collusion  between  Luther  and  any 
group  of  men  of  his  time  to  overthrow  the  inherited 
ecclesiastical  institutions.  As  soon  as  that  remarkable 
critic  and  scholar,  Erasmus,  came  to  recognize  that  a 
religious  change  was  threatened,  which  would  involve 
the  23unitive  opposition  of  the  Church  authorities,  he 
discreetly  passed  by  on  the  other  side.  "I  abominate 
tumult  more  than  anything  else,'^  he  wrote.  "I  am  not 
so  insane  as  to  do  anything  against  the  chief  vicar  of 
Christ  and  I  am  unwilling  to  cross  even  a  bishop."  Ad- 
dressing Leo  himself,  he  spoke  of  that  pontiff  '^as  the 
chief  imitator  of  Christ,  who  spends  himself  for  Chris- 
tian salvation."  These  words  were  written  at  the  time 
when  the  Diet  of  Worms  was  impending,  and  in  several 
other  letters  Erasmus  went  on  to  say  that  if  they  wanted 
Luther  to  roast  or  to  boil,  it  mattered  not  to  him. 

In  passing  a  judgment  upon  the  Eeformation,  it  is 
of  prime  importance  to  bear  these  facts  in  mind.  Luther 
entered  upon  his  career  as  a  Eeformer,  not  with  any 
hostility  to  the  Church,  not  through  a  message  from 
the  reformers  before  the  Eeformation,  and  not  in  col- 
lusion with  any  body  of  men,  his  contemporaries.  If 
ever  mortal  man  since  the  days  of  Paul  started  off  on  his 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  29 

mission  independently   of  human   aid,   it  was  Martin 
Luther. 

When  Luther  entered  upon  his  career  in  1517,  he 
was  impelled  by  an  inward  conviction  won  through 
the  study  of  the  Bible.  Poring  over  its  open  pages,  he 
received  his  message.  The  Eeformation  was  an  experi-  ' 
ence  in  Luther's  own  soul  before  it  became  a  historic 
movement  which  spread  over  Europe.  He  proclaimed  a 
new  era,  because  the  new  era  had  first  dawned  in  him. 
Not  of  man,  not  by  man,  did  this  conviction  arise.  It 
developed  gradually  as  by  a  process  and  yet  he  became 
conscious  of  it  suddenly  as  if  by  revelation.  Throughj 
recent  and  most  unexpected  literary  discoveries  this 
statement  of  the  origin  of  the  Eeformation  has  had 
abundant  confirmation. 

In  entering  the  convent  at  Erfurt,  Luther  sought  to 
make  his  calling  and  election  sure,  to  escape  or  appease 
the  punitive  justice  of  God.  The  monastery  was  the 
surest  way,  known  to  the  Middle  Ages,  to  reach  holiness 
here  and  heaven  hereafter.  Anselm,  in  his  letters,  de- 
clared that  no  other  way  was  so  sure.  St.  Bernard  was 
not  satisfied  until  he  had  persuaded  all  his  brothers  to 
enter  the  convent  and  his  sister  to  take  the  veil.  The 
monkish  vow  came  to  be  treated  as  equivalent  to  a 
second  baptism  by  which  the  monk  was  restored  to 
innocency.  This  was  the  teaching  of  St.  Bernard  and 
Thomas  Aquinas.  The  meritorious  holiness  to  which 
the  monkish  vow  was  the  introduction,  no  one  follow- 
ing a  lay  calling  could  ever  hope  to  secure. 

With  singular  intensity  Luther  devoted  himself   to 


30  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

monastic  rule  and  wasted  his  body  with  asceticisms. 
"If  monk,"  so  he  said  in  after  years,  "ever  got  to 
heaven  by  monkery,  surely  I  shonld  have  got  there." 

He  had  the  privilege  of  seeing  religion  in  practice 
at  its  central  hearth,  Eome.  In  that  city  he  ran  from 
altar  to  altar  and  crypt  to  crypt,  saying  Masses  and 
wishing  his  parents  were  in  purgatory,  that  he  might 
pray  them  out.  He  climbed  the  Scala  Santa,  at  every 
step  making  petition  that  his  grandfather  might  be 
released  from  that  uncomfortable  abode. 

His  opportunities  for  cultivating  piety  were  the  best 
the  age  knew.  Strong  in  religious  purpose,  he  yet  failed 
through  these  experiences  to  find  religious  peace.  But 
his  punctuality  in  religious  exercises,  together  with  his 
abilities,  made  him  a  marked  man.  He  was  held  up 
by  his  superiors  as  a  model  monk.  The  head  of  the 
Augustinians,  John  of  Staupitz,  gave  him  his  warm 
friendship,  and  wdien  he  went  to  Eome  it  was  as  a 
delegate  of  this  order.  On  his  return,  Luther  was 
chosen  its  district  vicar,  and  on  the  recommendation  of 
Staupitz,  he  was  called  to  a  professorship  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Wittenberg.  A  year  later,  he  received  the 
theologian's  highest  academic  honor,  the  doctorate  of 
divinity,  an  honor  of  which  he  was  proud.  But  at  the 
time  of  receiving  the  doctorate,  so  he  tells  us,  he  did 
not  know  what  justification  by  faith  means.  Then  fol- 
lowed the  period  of  five  years  leading  up  to  the  hour 
of  high  noon  when  he  posted  the  Theses  on  the  church 
door  in  Wittenberg,  October  31,  1517.  What  was  he 
reading  in  those  j-ears?     What  thoughts  were  making 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  31 

pathways  tlirongh  this  monk's  mind?  What  messages 
was  he  delivering  to  his  students?  Was  he  undergoing 
any  special  preparation  for  his  public  career?  By  the 
literary  discoveries,  to  which  allusion  has  been  made, 
these  questions  have  all  been  answered. 

We  now  possess  some  of  the  very  books  which  Luther 
read  and  diligently  annotated  during  these  five  years. 
From  Melanchthon  we  knew  that  he  was  lecturing  on 
The  Psalms  and  The  Epistle  of  Paul  to  the  Eomans, 
but  nothing  more.  Now  we  have  tlie  very  texts  of  those 
lectures,  in  copies  taken  down  by  students  in  the  lec- 
ture room,  and,  in  the  case  of  the  lectures  on  Eomans, 
we  have  in  addition  the  very  manuscript  which  Luther 
wrote  with  his  own  hand.  The  lectures  on  The  Psalms 
were  delivered  1513-1514,  the  lectures  on  Pomans  1515- 
15K3. 

It  is  noteworthy,  on  first  sight,  that  the  new  pro- 
fessor took  up  the  very  books  of  the  Bible  which  set 
forth  in  every  verse  the  immediate  communion  of  the 
soul  with  God  and  elaborate  the  doctrine  that  the  sinner 
is  saved  by  faith  alone.  The  Schoolmen,  one  after  an- 
other, had  reveled  in  the  imagery  of  the  Song  of  Songs; 
Luther  interpreted  the  cold  statements  of  Paul  in  his 
fullest  epistle. 

But  most  noteworthy  is  the  progress  which  these  lec- 
tures show  as  going  on  in  Luther's  mind  as  he  sank 
himself  in  the  teachings  of  God's  Word.  As  he  pro- 
ceeds we  find  him  denouncing  Aristotle,  the  authority 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  "as  the  accursed  heathen  philos- 
opher," and  dissenting  from  Tliomas  Aquinas,  the  prince 


32  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

of  the  Schoolmen.  The  Schoohnen  themselves  he  pro- 
nounces '^swine  theologians/'  a  designation  somewhat 
offensive  but  expressing  forcibly  what  Luther  meant, 
that  they  had  fed  upon  the  husks  of  the  human  reason 
instead  of  upon  the  pure  wdieat  of  Scripture.  He  even 
dares  to  dissent  from  the  African  Father.  More  and 
more  he  holds  forth  Augustine  as  the  reliable  teacher 
on  the  doctrines  of  human  inability  and  unmerited  grace. 
More  and  more  his  independence  as  a  student  and  ex- 
positor comes  into  view.  He  pronounces  treatises 
ascribed  to  Augustine  spurious,  a  judgment  confirmed 
by  modern  criticism.  He  compares  Scripture  with 
Scripture,  making  it  its  own  interpreter — a  principle 
the  Eeformers  afterwards  with  unanimity  insisted  upon. 
He  goes  back  to  the  original  Greek  text,  saying  again 
and  again,  "The  Greek  is  thus  and  so.''  Finally,  in  the 
comments  on  the  latter  chapters  of  Paul's  epistle,  the 
reader  is  fairly  swept  along  by  the  spirit  with  which 
they  are  pervaded,  the  spirit  of  triumphant  joy  and 
assurance  of  salvation.  Here  Luther  seems  to  be  lifted 
above  himself  with  the  conviction  of  justifying  grace. 
"Man,"  he  says,  "is  at  all  times  a  sinner,  at  all  times 
penitent,  at  all  times  righteous" — semper  peccator, 
semper  penitens,  semper  Justus.  If  it  be  true  that 
Jonathan  Edwards,  as  he  tells  us,  studied  Locke's  phil- 
osophy with  the  greed  with  which  a  miser  counts  coins 
of  gold,  so  this  monk  in  the  silence  of  his  study,  was 
searching  with  intense  craving  for  the  meaning  of 
Paul's  chapters  setting  forth  God's  grace. 

Gradually,  by  severe  study  of  the  Scriptures,  Luther 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  33 

came  to  his  conviction  that  justification  is  by  free  grace 
through  faith  alone. 

It  is  not  at  all  inconsistent  with  this  experience  that 
the  apprehension  of  this  truth  came  to  him  as  by  a  flash. 
Suddenly,  so  Luther  said  in  later  years,  In  the 
convent  in  Wittenberg,  the  meaning  of  the  passage, 
"The  just  shall  live  by  faith,"  burst  upon  him,  opening 
to  his  soul,  as  it  were,  the  very  gates  of  paradise.  This 
happened  sometime  between  the  years  1512  and  1517. 
Sir  William  Hamilton  had  a  like  experience.  For 
months  he  had  been  working  upon  a  higher  problem, 
when  suddenly,  while  walking  on  the  street,  the  solu- 
tion flashed  upon  his  mind.  So  it  was  with  Anselm 
in  the  case  of  the  ontological  argument.  That  cele- 
brated argument  for  the  existence  of  God  was  the  result 
of  a  long  process  going  on  in  Anselm's  mind  and  yet 
its  solution  came  as  a  revelation,  when  in  the  darkness 
of  the  night  its  outline  suddenly  stood  before  the  great 
Schoolman's  intellect  in  clear  statement. 

When  Luther  posted  up  his  Theses,  he  had  already 
made  the  transition  from  a  Church-taught  man  to  a 
Bible-taught  man.  To  him,  as  the  lectures  on  Eomans 
state  again  and  again,  the  Scriptures  had  come  to  be 
of  compelling  authority.  Not  upon  Church  teachers  did 
he  depend  for  their  meaning  but  upon  the  plain  text 
as  he  found  it  in  the  original.  Before  he  posted  up 
the  Theses,  this  doctrine,  and  the  doctrine  that  we  are 
justified  by  faith  apart  from  works  of  the  law,  had  taken 
full  possession  of  his  thought.  The  opening  words  of 
those  Theses  were  a  firm  statement  of  the  former  con- 


34  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

viction.  "Our  Lord  and  Master,  when  he  said  '^repent/ 
meant  that  the  entire  life  should  be  a  repenting."  They 
had  the  ring  of  a  new  era.  They  were  the  assertion  of 
the  supreme  immediate  authority  of  Christ  to  which  all 
other  authorities  were  to  be  subordinated.  On  this  point 
Luther  and  the  other  Reformers  never  wavered.  It  was 
the  victory  that  overcame. 

The  experience  of  Calvin  was  likewise  the  result  of 
a  process  of  study  and  struggle  and  yet  also,  as  it  were, 
a  sudden  revelation.  Pie  has  left  on  record  two  brief 
accounts.  "By  a  sudden  conversion,"  so  he  said,  he 
was  transferred  from  the  mire  and  his  feet  set  upon  the 
rock.  "After  trying,"  he  said,  "by  all  the  ways  of 
the  Catholic  faith  to  reach  peace,  I  failed,  and  finally 
the  Gospel,  like  a  sudden  ray  of  light,  showed  me  the 
deep  abyss  of  error  I  was  in,  and,  frightened  and  with 
tears,  I  took  God's  way." 

The  inner  experiences  of  these  two  leading  Reform- 
ers stand,  as  it  were,  like  bastions  of  rock  at  the  en- 
trance of  the  reform  movement  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. All  sorts  of  psychological  explanations  of  Luther's 
course  may  be  attempted,  but  these  things  stand  sure 
of  these  two  men :  They  left  the  old  system  with  reluc- 
tance; they  knew  its  workings  by  training  and  experi- 
ence; they  were  diligent  students  of  the  Scriptures; 
they  were  in  no  conspiracy  to  establish  a  new  system; 
a  compelling  conviction  from  within  moved  them  to 
enter  on  their  new  course. 

The  same  is  true  of  other  Reformers.  In  his  first 
sermon  on  The  Lord's  Prayer,  Bishop  Hugh  Latimer 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  35 

declared :  "I  was  as  obstinate  a  papist  as  any  was  in 
England,  insomuch  that,  when  I  should  be  made  a 
bachelor  of  divinity,  my  whole  oration  went  against 
Philip  Melanchthon  and  against  his  opinions.  Then 
having  met  Master  Bilney,  or  rather  Saint  Bilney,  that 
suffered  death  for  Christ's  sake,  I  learned  more  by  his 
confession  than  before  in  many  years,  so  that  from  that 
time  forward  I  began  to  smell  the  Word  of  God  and 
forsook  the  school  doctors  and  such  fooleries."  The 
bishop  then  went  on  to  give  an  account  of  the  practical 
ministries  he  set  out  to  perform  in  Bilney's  company. 

Again,  if  we  would  pass  a  fair  judgment  upon  the 
Eeformation,  we  must  bear  in  mind  another  considera- 
tion^  of  prime  importance :  Its  leaders,  the  Eeformers, 
were  men  imbued  with  the  highest  education  of  their 
time.  I  have  no  intention  of  enlarging  upon  their 
writings  which  constitute  a  large  contribution  to 
religious  literature.  I  am  now  interested  in  calling 
attention  to  a  single  feature. 

The  Eeformers  studied  the  latest  books  and  were 
familiar  with  the  most  recent  investigations  of  their 
age.  The  study  of  Greek  and  Hebrew,  a  new  thing, 
was  looked  upon  with  suspicion  by  many  of  their  con- 
temporaries or  denounced  as  reprobate.  The  Eeformers, 
on  the  contrary,  gave  themselves  to  it  diligently  and 
were,  in  respect  to  theological  studies,  in  the  van  of 
their  age.  "The  old  ways  are  good  enough,"  said  many. 
"We  cannot  improve  upon  the  Fathers  and  the  School- 
men. What  they  did  not  know  is  not  worth  knowing. 
The  Vulorate  is  sufficient.    It  has  served  for  a  thousand 


36  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

years  and  more."  "Man/'  said  the  old  English  priest, 
when  Tyndale  told  him  he  was  intending  to  make  God's 
laws  accessible  to  the  boy  that  drove  the  plow  (that  is, 
translate  the  Scriptures  into  English),  "we  were  better 
without  God's  laws  than  the  pope's." 

If  the  Reformers  in  Wittenberg,  Zurich,  Basel,  Stras- 
burg,  Geneva,  and  Cambridge,  had  not  been  up-to-date 
men,  there  would  have  been  no  Eeformation.  Gregory 
the  Great  knew  no  Greek.  Anselm  knew  no  Greek. 
Thomas  Aquinas  knew  no  Greek.  Bernard  knew  no 
Greek.  Wyclif  knew  no  Greek.  John  Huss  knew  no 
Greek.  During  the  seven  or  eight  centuries  before  1500 
— if  we  except  the  hazy  traditions  of  Irish  convents — 
not  a  single  western  Churchman  knew  Greek.  But 
Luther  did,  and  Calvin  did,  and  Zwingli  and  CEcolampa- 
dius  and  Bucer  did,  and  Bullinger  and  Beza  did. 

In  Luther's  lectures  on  Eomans  we  can  point  almost 
to  the  precise  moment  when  he  had  a  copy  of  Erasmus' 
Greek  New  Testament  in  his  hands.  No  sooner  did 
that  epochal  volume  appear,  March,  1516,  than  Luther 
was  using  it  at  the  ninth  chapter  of  Eomans.  Later 
in  his  replies  to  his  assailants  who  fortified  their  state- 
ments with  conciliar  decisions  and  papal  decretals — 
precedents  of  the  canon  law — Luther  bulwarked  his 
pages  with  texts  from  the  Scriptures  and  referred  back 
to  the  Greek,  notably  to  the  word  metanoeo,  which,  he 
told  his  assailants,  did  not  mean  to  do  works  of  pen- 
ance, as  the  Vulgate  translated  it,  but  to  experience  an 
inward  change  of  heart. 

To  accurate  linguistic  attainments  Calvin  also  added  a 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  37 

mind  of  rare  acumen  and  logical  precision.  This  was 
abundantly  recognized  in  the  schools  where  he  studied 
law  under  eminent  jurists.  He  was  a  humanist  before 
he  was  a  Eeformer  and  issued  a  commentary  on  Seneca's 
treatise  on  mercy.  Luther  translated  the  Scriptures 
from  the  originals  for  the  first  time  in  ten  centuries. 
Calvin  was  the  chief  critical  expositor  among  the  Ee- 
formers,  basing  his  studies  on  the  original  text  for  the 
first  time  in  ten  centuries  or  more.  Even  Augustine  did 
not  do  this  and  had  to  content  himself  with  the  Itala 
and  the  Yulgate. 

As  for  Zwingli,  no  sooner  did  he  see  one  of  Erasmus' 
New  Testaments  than  he  copied  the  Greek  of  the  Paul- 
ine epistles  for  his  own  use.  He  had  studied  in  Vienna 
and  Basel  and  his  humanistic  attainments  won  from 
the  pope  an  annual  pension. 

Beza  was  an  expert  Greek  scholar,  as  his  edition  of 
the  Greek  Testament  shows.  Among  the  English  Eef  orm- 
ers  were  Cambridge  and  Oxford  men,  who  had  sat  at 
the  feet  of  Grocyn,  Colet,  and  Erasmus.  When  these 
and  other  Eeformers  spoke  and  wrote  it  was  as  men 
endowed  with  high  intellectual  gifts,  conversant  with 
the  medieval  system  and  unequaled  in  their  knowledge 
of  the  Scriptures  in  the  original. 

If  ever  a  body  of  men  was  competent  to  speak  against 
a  prevailing  system,  then  the  Eeformers  by  reason  of 
mental  gifts,  by  reason  of  scholastic  training,  by  reason 
of  experience  in  convent  and  university,  by  reason  of 
familiarity  with  the  customs  of  the  people  and  priest- 
hood, were  competent  to  speak  against  the  prevailing 


38  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

religious  system  inherited  from  the  Middle  Ages.  Who 
of  his  age  was  so  quick  as  Luther  to  accept  the  proof 
given  by  Laurentius  Valla  that  the  Pseudo-Isidorian 
Decretals  were  an  invention?  Who  was  more  deeply 
read  in  the  Fathers  than  Calvin?  Who  introduced  the 
modern  school  method  into  Germany,  if  not  Melanch- 
thon?  Who  insisted  on  general  education  for  poor  as 
well  as  rich,  if  not  Luther,  Calvin,  Zwingli,  and  John 
Knox?  These  men  were  acquainted  with  the  past  and 
familiar  with  the  conditions  of  their  age  before  they 
advocated  the  policies  which  these  modem  times  have 
put  into  practice. 

The  medieval  scheme,  against  which  the  Eeformers 
with  one  consent  contended,  presented  three  main  con- 
structions :  The  monarchical  papacy,  the  sacramental 
system,  and  the  Inquisition,  all  so  deeply  grounded  by 
the  dialectics  of  the  Schoolmen  that  they  seemed  to  be 
as  firmly  established  as  the  foundations  of  the  medieval 
cathedrals. 

The  papacy  was  accepted  as  the  final  arbiter  in  all 
things  human.  The  notorious  bull  of  Boniface  VIII, 
the  Unam  Sanctam,  issued  130,2,  asserted  three  things 
with  a  clearness  which  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired.  As 
against  the  claims  of  the  Greek  Church,  it  asserted  the 
unity  of  the  Church  under  the  Eoman  pontiff.  As 
against  the  independence  of  the  State,  it  asserted  that 
both  swords,  the  spiritual  sword  and  the  sword  of  steel, 
are  subject  to  the  will  of  the  Eoman  pontiff.  As  against 
the  idea  that  Christ  can  give  eternal  life  independently 
of  all  seen  institutions,  it  asserted  that  it  is  "altogether 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  39 

necessary  for  the  salvation  of  every  human  being  that 
he  be  subject  to  the  Eoman  pontiff."  A  crass  assertion, 
this  last,  as  opposed  to  our  Lord's  words,  "He  that  be- 
lieveth  hath  eternal  life" !  These  assertions  of  Boni- 
face stirred  up  many  a  pamphleteer  from  Dante 
and  Marsilius  of  Padua  to  Wyclif  and  Huss  and  Gerson 
and  Nieheim ;  but,  in  spite  of  opposition,  they  remained 
the  unmodified  view  of  the  hierarchy.  The  Council  of 
Constance,  1415,  declared  that  the  final  arbiter  in  eccle- 
siastical matters  should  be  a  general  council.  This 
decision  solemnly  made,  with  such  men  as  Gerson, 
d'Ailly,  and  Cardina  Zarabella,  leaders  in  the  council, 
was  easily  superseded  fifty  years  later  by  Pius  II  in  his 
famous  hulla  execrahUis.  Just  six  months  before  Luther 
posted  up  his  Theses,  the  bull  of  1303  was  solemnly 
reaffirmed  by  Leo  X.  According  to  Prierias,  Leo  X's 
spokesman  against  Luther,  the  pope  is  above  all  councils : 
he  judges  all  and  is  judged  by  no  man.  From  his 
tribunal  there  is  no  appeal:  his  word  releases  from 
purgatory ;  the  Scriptures  themselves  get  their  authority 
from  his  approval.  This  notable  treatise  was  written 
in  1520. 

The  sacramental  system,  to  further  which  the  School- 
men bent  their  best  energies,  placed  the  priest  at  the 
gate  of  heaven.  E^xcept  by  his  sufferance,  no  man  can 
have  entrance.  The  sacraments  which  he  dispenses  act 
like  drugs.  They  contain  and  confer  grace  by  a  virtue 
inherent  in  themselves  and  grace  cannot  be  had  with- 
out them. 

By  the  Inquisition,  the  Church  took  away  the  right  / 


40  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

of  private  opinion  in  religious  matters  and  denied  exist- 
ence on  earth  to  an3^one  daring  to  dissent  from  its 
dogmas.  This  is  the  explicit  teaching  of  Thomas 
Aquinas. 

To  these  three  mighty  constructions,  the  Eeformers 
opposed  the  open  Bible  as  every  man's  Book,  and  the 
teaching  that  justification  is  by  faith  in  Jesus  Christ, 
independent  of  works  or  sacerdotal  ministrations^ 

As  for  the  papacy,  to  Luther  the  pope  came  to  be  an 
antichrist,  ^"^the  very  worst  that  all  devils  with  all  their 
power  could  do.''  Luther's  words  were  vehement  and, 
when  it  came  to  calling  names,  as  one  of  my  students 
once  put  it,  Luther  "could  beat  them  all."  But  the 
provocation  was  great.  If  we  choose  to  forget  x\lexander 
VI,  recently  deceased,  his  mistresses,  the  open  marriage 
of  his  children  from  the  Vatican,  his  sale  of  cardinals' 
hats;  if  we  forget  Julius  II,  whom  Luther  called  the 
sanguinary  pope,  clad  in  armor  and  fighting  without 
mercy  against  the  French  in  upper  Italy,  himself  also 
the  father  of  children ;  if  we  forget  Leo  X,  entering  the 
Vatican  with  the  frivolous  words,  "God  has  given  us 
the  papacy,  let  us  enjoy  it,"  his  pawning  of  the  tiara 
to  keep  up  the  extravagances  of  his  court,  his  duplicity 
in  politics — if  we  choose  to  forget  such  papal  practices, 
we  must  remember  that  Leo  X  called  Luther  the  boar 
out  of  the  woods  and  the  wild  beast  of  the  forest,  a 
heretic — and  heretics  were  burnt — and  that  the  car- 
dinal legates,  Cajetan  and  Aleander,  called  Luther 
"that  German  beast,"  that  "pernicious  monster,"  that 
"scoundrel  and  dog  for  whom  the  iron  and  fire  were 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  41 

prepared/'  No  one  was  in  doubt  that  they  were  seeking 
Luther's  blood,  and,  from  the  broad  human  standpoint, 
the  monk  of  Wittenberg  was  no  more  guilty  in  using 
strong  words  than  was  the  man  at  Eome  or  the  cardinals 
in  Augsburg  and  at  AVorms.  Of  one  thing  we  are 
pretty  certain — that  Luther,  the  Wittenberg  monk,  never 
sought  the  life  of  pope  or  cardinal  or  commended  injury 
to  their  persons. 

As  for  the  sacraments,  the  Eeformers  set  aside  the 
sacerdotal  function  of  the  clergy  and  the  sacrificial  ele- 
ment from  the  Mass,  and  recovered  for  every  man  the 
right  to  go  immediately  to  the  throne  of  grace  to  find 
mercy  and  obtain  help  in  every  time  of  need. 

As  for  the  Inquisition,  we  confess  with  regret  that 
the  Eeformers  did  not  give  full  swing  to  the  principle, 
enunciated  by  Luther  at  the  outset,  that  it  is  against 
the  will  of  the  Spirit  that  compulsion  be  used  in  mat- 
ters of  religious  opinion.  It  is  quite  possible,  as  Nicolas 
Paulus  shows  in  his  w^ork  on  religious  toleration,  to 
prove  that  the  Protestants  erred  badly  and  not  infre- 
quently in  this  matter,  even  to  the  dealing  with  the 
presumed  witches  at  Salem.  Nevertheless,  the  Eeform- 
ers were  headed  in  the  right  direction  and,  among  Prot- 
estant peoples,  the  right  of  private  judgment  found 
expression  in  William  the  Silent's  edict  of  religious 
tolerance,  1576,  in  the  noble  expression  of  the  West- 
minster divines  that  "God  alone  is  Lord  of  the  con- 
science," and  in  the  article  giving  "soul  liberty,"  which 
that  spiritual  and  somewhat  heady  descendant  of  Calvin, 


42  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

Eoger  Williams,  put  into  the  constitution  of  one  of  our 
colonies. 

The  Eeformers  have  been  called  revolutionaries.  So 
they  were.  They  destro3'ed  and  they  built  up.  A  new 
era  was  not  otherwise  possible.  The  plea  that  an  orderly 
current  of  religious  reform  was  moving  in  Europe  is 
hardly  worth  consideration  until  we  have  set  aside  con- 
temporary popes,  beginning,  say,  with  Sixtus  IV  and 
Alexander  VI  and  ending  with  Alessandro  Farnese  and 
Julius  III,  or  until  the  testimonies  of  all  the  Eeform- 
ers are  set  aside,  from  Luther's  and  Tyndale's  to  the 
very  last  of  them,  as  ignorant  or  malicious  perjuries. 
Stigmatizing  epithets  heaped  upon  Luther  and  the  per- 
sons of  the  other  Eeformers  will  not  be  sufficient  per- 
manently to  darken  the  Eeformation  and  discredit  its 
principles,  any  more  than  the  fires  at  Smithfield  and 
Oxford  and  St.  Andrews  could  burn  up  the  good  names 
of  British  martyrs.  The  main  question  will  always 
be:  Did  the  teachings  of  the  Eeformers  accord  with 
the  Word  of  God  ?  By  the  Word  of  God  those  teachings 
stand  or  fall.  What  God  may  have  in  store  for  the 
Church  in  the  future  in  bringing  together  into  hearty 
fellowship  and  cooperation  Christians,  Eoman  Catholic 
and  Protestant,  I  do  not  presume  to  be  able  to  foresee. 
But  Protestant  Christendom  will  have  its  mission,  we 
may  be  assured,  so  long  as  it  remains  true  to  the  con- 
fession that  Christ  is  the  immediate  Head  of  his  Church 
and  of  every  individual  member  of  the  Church,  even 
as  in  the  body  the  head  is  in  immediate  connection  with 
every  one  of  the  members;  so  long  as  it  holds  to  the 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  43 

declaration  made  before  the  powers  of  the  world  at 
Worms  in  1521 :  "My  conscience  is  bound  captive  in 
the  Word  of  God  and  to  do  anything  against  conscience 
is  unsafe  and  dangerous.  Here  I  stand.  I  can  do  no 
otherwise.    God  help  me.    Amen." 


THE  SEJ^VICE  IN  THE  FIRST  BAPTIST 

CHURCH,  REV.  GEORGE  M. 

TRUETT,   PASTOR 

Rev.  Frank  Chalmers  McKean,  D.D.,  pastor  of  the 
Central  Presbyterian  Church  of  Des  Moines,  and  a 
member  of  the  Assembly's  Committee  on  the  Celebra- 
tion of  the  Four  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Re- 
formation, presided. 

The  Scripture  lesson  was  read  by  Rev.  George  0. 
Nichols,  pastor  of  the  First  Presbyterian  Church  of 
Guthrie,  Oklahoma,  and  the  prayer  was  offered  by  Rev. 
Hugh  B.  McCrone,  D.D.,  pastor  of  the  Wakefield  Presby- 
terian Church,  Germantown,  Pennsylvania. 

The  addresses  were  delivered  by  Rev.  J.  Ross  Steven- 
son, D.D.,  LL.D.,  President  of  Princeton  Theological 
Seminary,  and  Rev.  William  Henry  Roberts,  D.D., 
LL.D.,  Stated  Clerk  of  the  General  Assembly. 

In  introducing  Dr.  Stevenson,  Dr.  McKean  said : 

We  meet  to-night  to  celebrate  in  advance  the  anni- 
versary of  one  of  the  world's  mightiest  movements,  for 
the  influence  of  which  the  world  owes  a  debt — the  Pro- 
testant Reformation.  Carlyle  aptly  said,  "All  heroes 
are  intrinsically  of  the  same  material,  but  their  out- 
ward shape  depends  upon  the  environment  in  which 
they  find  tliemselves."  Great  characters,  therefore,  are 
the  outgrowth  of  their  conditions.  They  stand  out 
prominently  as  products  of  their  age.     The  sixteenth 

45 


46  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

century  was  not  one  of  kid-gioved  diplomacy.  Like 
John  the  Baptist,  the  personalities  of  Luther,  Calvin, 
and  Knox,  laid  the  ax  to  the  root  of  the  trees.  In  the 
history  of  nations  we  find  no  men  who  displayed  a 
grander  faith  in  God,  a  more  dauntless  courage,  or  a 
more  uncompromising  attitude  toward  the  evils  of  their 
day,  than  those  personalities  whose  lives  and  deeds  are 
indelibly  stamped  upon  Europe  and  the  world.  We 
love  them  and  revere  their  memories  because  of  the 
principles  they  advocated. 

In  introducing  Dr.  Eoberts,  Dr.  McKean  said : 
It  frequently  happens  that  the  age  in  which  a  man 
lives  does  not  appreciate  his  worth.  The  modern  world 
has  a  higher  opinion  of  Socrates  than  had  those  who 
pressed  thq  hemlock  to  his  lips.  If  Jesus  were  sent  to 
the  cross  in  this  age  he  would  have  more  followers  about 
him  than  a  handful  of  women  and  a  few  ignorant  fisher- 
men. The  ultimate  verdict  of  history  upon  the  life  of 
any  individual  may  always  be  determined  by  his  atti- 
tude toward  the  progressive  movements  of  the  age  in 
which  he  lives.  We  can  better  judge  the  men  of  the 
Eeformation  who  attacked  error  in  its  own  fortified 
citadel  than  they  could  be  judged  when  the  sea  of 
Europe's  religious  life  was  lashed  by  the  angry  waves 
of  Eeformation  days.  As  we  glance  back  over  four 
centuries,  well  might  we  ask.  What  does  modern  civiliza- 
tion owe  to  these  men?  They  helped  to  settle  the  true 
relation  between  the  State  and  its  subjects.  They  were 
mighty  factors  in  establishing  political  and  religious 
freedom. 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  47 

N'o  man  in  the  Presbyterian  Church  is  better  able  to 
discuss  the  Eeformation  in  relation  to  civil  and  religious 
liberty  than  our  own  beloved  Stated  Clerk,  Dr.  William 
Henry  Roberts. 


THE  EEFOEMATION:  A  EEVIVAL  OF 
EELIGION' 

BY 

J.  ROSS  STEVENSON,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

The  Eeformation  may  be  considered  from  three  main 
points  of  view.  It  may  be  regarded  as  an  intellectual 
awakening,  a  revival  of  learning,  making  possible  popu- 
lar education  and  all  the  science  and  philosophy  of  our 
time.  Or  we  may  study  it  as  a  political  event,  a  rebel- 
lion against  corruption  and  absolutism  in  government, 
a  great  democratic  movement  toward  popular  rule  and 
the  blessings  of  civil  liberty.  But  although  the  Eef- 
ormation  brought  Europe  out  of  the  Dark  Ages  into 
a  new  era  of  enlightenment  and  intellectual  freedom, 
though  it  was  an  effective  protest  against  moral  wrong 
and  political  oppression,  and  was  the  beginning  of  a 
"government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  peo- 
ple," it  was  primarily  and  essentially  a  revival  of 
religion,  an  awakening  of  spiritual  life.  It  stirred  the 
universities  of  Europe.  It  shook  thrones  and  principali- 
ties and  powers,  but  it  dealt  mainly  with  the  Church, 
It  was  a  reformation  of  religious  beliefs  and  practices 
and  its  fruitage  is  to  be  found  in  new  creeds,  new  forms 
of  worship  and  polity,  new  channels  of  service,  and  new 
hopes  for  the  redemption  of  mankind. 

At  the  same  time  it  should  be  remembered  that  this 

49 


50  THE    PR0TE8TANT    REFORMATION 

revival  cannot  be  understood  as  a  separate  and  inde- 
pendent religions  event.  It  is  safe  to  assume  that  it 
would  not  have  taken  jDlace  had  it  not  been  for  the 
intellectual  awakening  which  preceded  it.  Nor  would 
it  have  been  worth  while — or  perhaps  I  should  say  it 
would  not  have  been  a  real  religious  awakening — had 
it  not  issued  in  a  reformation  of  social,  political,  and 
moral  life.  I  wish  we  might  grasp  the  full  significance 
of  this.  There  are  revivals  of  religion  which  simply 
touch  the  surface  of  life.  The  seed  falls  upon  stony 
soil  where  there  is  no  deepness  of  earth.  It  springs  up 
and  endures  for  a  little  while,  but  it  is  soon  scorched 
and  withers  away.  A  revival  of  lasting  fruitage  strikes 
its  roots  deep.  Not  only  the  soil  but  the  subsoil  has  to 
be  plowed  up  and  amply  prepared  for  a  vigorous  growth 
and  a  lasting  fruitage.  Before  Christianity  could  be 
planted  throughout  the  Eoman  Empire,  the  soil  of 
Judaism,  with  its  genius  for  religion,  the  soil  of  Greek 
thought  and  language,  with  its  clearness  and  accuracy, 
the  soil  of  Eoman  power  and  talent  of  organization,  had 
to  be  prepared.  It  took  Luther  but  a  moment  to  post 
the  Mnety-five  Theses,  but  their  preparation  was  a  labor 
of  years,  and  their  comprehension  and  acceptance  meant 
a  people  made  ready — fallow  ground  broken  up — by  the 
Spirit  of  God. 

Different  forces  produced  this  intellectual  awakening 
preceding  the  Eeformation.  The  fall  of  Constantinople 
introduced  Greek  learning  into  the  universities,  and 
made  possible  the  critical  study  of  Scripture  by  such 
men  as  Eeuchlin  and  Erasmus.    The  invention  of  print- 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  51 

ing  made  possible  the  more  rapid  dissemination  of 
knowledge,  and  the  proof  that  the  earth  revolves  around 
the  sun,  the  use  of  the  compass,  and  the  discovery  of 
x4Lmerica,  opened  up  a  new  world  of  thought  and  inquiry 
which  forecast  the  overthrow  of  bigotry,  deceit,  and  un- 
reality. The  intrepid  pre-Eeformers — Wyclif,  Huss, 
Wessel,  and  Savonarola — with  their  fearless  denuncia- 
tions of  the  existing  order,  paved  the  way  to  a  new 
w^orld.  The  rising  spirit  of  national  independence  in 
England,  in  Bohemia,  in  Germany  and  the  Netherlands, 
in  France  and  Italy,  was  dynamiting  the  soil  for  moral 
and  political  changes  which  must  take  place.  When  all 
was  ready  the  revival  began. 

It  makes  us  wonder  whether  God  has  not  been  pre- 
paring our  w^orld  for  a  second  Eeformation  in  the  great 
movements  which  have  characterized  the  recent  years. 
As  against  the  revival  of  learning  we  have  had  our 
intellectual  awakening,  the  dominance  of  culture,  and 
the  world-wide  extension  of  education.  A  new  national 
consciousness  is  everywhere  manifest,  which  has  to 
reckon  with  relationships  to  all  mankind,  and  prophets 
have  arisen  not  only  to  rebuke  the  Church,  but  to 
demand  the  overthrow  of  autocratic  governments  and 
all  forms  of  oppression.  I  wish  to  speak  of  this  further 
in  another  connection. 

The  Reformation  as  a  revival  of  religion  was  construe- . 
tive  rather  than  destructive  in  its  aims.    That  kings  were 
tyrants,  that  popes  were  scoundrels,  that  priests  and 
monks   were   ignorant   and   immoral,    that   the    whole 
Church  was  corrupt,  and  that  reformation  of  both  head 


52  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

and  members  was  needed,  no  one  could  deny.  The 
Church  herself  summoned  councils  for  the  reformation 
of  the  clergy  and  Christian  people,  and  the  restoration 
of  ecclesiastical  discipline.  But  how  could  this  be 
accomplished  ?  Evidently  not  by  exposure  and  denun- 
ciation alone.  Men  like  Petrarch,  Dante,  and  Boccaccio, 
with  blazing  satire  scourged  the  Church  from  head  to 
foot,  without  effecting  any  perceptible  change.  The 
great  reform  councils  of  Pisa  and  Constance  recognized 
existing  moral  evils,  but  would  acknowledge  no  error 
in  doctrine  and  thus  accomplished  nothing  of  any 
moment.  The  pre-Eeformers,  Wyclif  and  Huss,  clearly 
perceived  that  corruption  of  life  was  due  to  erroneous 
beliefs,  and  that  only  truth  could  make  men  free,  but 
they  did  not  grasp  with  sufficient  boldness  the  truth 
which  would  serve  as  a  flame  of  fire  to  purge  away 
the  dross  of  centuries,  and  illuminate  and  purify  the 
Church  with  the  very  life  of  God.  It  remained  for 
Luther  and  Calvin  and  Knox  to  apprehend  the  saving, 
transforming  truth  of  the  gospel  of  Christ,  which  each 
had  tested  in  his  own  experience,  and  for  the  reality 
and  power  of  which  each  was  ready  to  lay  down  his  life. 
The  message  of  the  Eeformation  summoned  the  people 
of  Europe  back  to  Christ,  to  his  sovereignty  and  all- 
sufficiency  in  the  work  of  salvation;  back  to  the  Scrip- 
tures as  the  one  supreme  and  only  authoritative  source 
of  religious  truth;  and  back  to  the  simplicity  of  the 
early  Church,  in  which  all  Christians  stood  on  the  same 
level  and  had  equal  place  and  worth  in  the  sight  of  God. 
This  positive  truth  thrust  aside  all  obstructions,  such 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  53 

as  confession  and  penance,  which  a  medieval  priesthood 
had  placed  between  the  soul  and  God.  It  overthrew  all 
man-made  deliverances  as  to  truth  and  belief,  to  which 
assent  was  necessary  in  order  to  salvation,  and  in  place 
of  a  divine  right  of  kings  and  an  apostolic  succession 
of  infallible  bishops,  it  put  the  priesthood  of  believers 
and  the  rule  of  the  people.  The  effect  of  this  Eefor- 
mation  preaching,  under  the  power  of  God's  Spirit,  was 
to  bring  to  distressed  souls  the  assurance  of  pardon,  a 
new,  free  spiritual  life  in  Christ,  and  courage  to  stand 
for  the  right.  Only  a  truth  as  great  and  strong  as 
eternity  can  grip  the  conscience  and  alter  the  bent  of 
men's  lives  and  make  them  free.  Such  a  truth  we  need 
just  now  amid  the  throes  and  anguish  of  world  travail. 
Some  one  has  said  that  the  present  Great  War  is 
primarily  a  religious  war.  Men  are  not  unanimous  as 
to  God.  They  are  not  agreed  as  to  his  character  and 
purposes.  The  term,  God,  is  not  distinctly  Christian. 
A  man's  god  may  be  wholly  pagan,  the  embodiment  of 
force  and  the  patron  of  a  race  or  nation,  so  that  it  is 
consistent  for  him  to  do  in  the  name  of  his  god  what 
he  would  not  do  in  the  name  of  the  God  and  Father  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  Paul  expressed  this  very  forcibly 
when  he  said,  "Though  there  be  that  are  called  gods, 
whether  in  heaven  or  on  earth;  as  there  are  gods  many, 
and  lords  many ;  yet  to  us  there  is  one  God,  the  Father, 
of  whom  are  all  things,  and  we  unto  him;  and  one  Lord, 
Jesus  Christ,  through  whom  are  all  things,  and  we 
through  him."  Surely  the  world  at  this  time  needs  to 
know  that  God  is  the  Father  of  men,  that  each  is  made 


^i 


54  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

in  his  image  and  is  to  be  recognized,  not  as  an  enemy 
to  be  slain  but  as  a  brother  to  be  loved,  and  that  there 
is  one  Lord,  who  must  be  supreme  over  all  nations  and 
in  every  relation  and  department  of  life,  whose  cross 
must  be  the  dominating  factor  in  all  faith  and  service. 
That  the  Reformation  bore  a  rich  and  abiding 
religious  fruitage  is  evidenced  by  the  new  and  more 
Scriptural  definitions  of  the  Christian  faith,  by  the 
simpler  and  more  spiritual  forms  of  Church  worship, 
and  by  a  ministry  which  gave  guidance,  strength,  and 
hope,  to  seekers  after  God.  But  what  I  would  have  you 
note  more  particularly  is  the  moral,  the  social,  the  politi- 
cal consequences  of  this  religious  revival  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  Dr.  Eoberts  in  the  address  which  is  to 
follow  will  portray  the  influences  of  the  Eeformation 
in  their  broad  and  beneficent  sweep,  but  let  us  not 
forget  the  religious  fountain  from  which  these  influences 
streamed.  People  sometimes  speak  of  an  ethical  revival, 
and  we  are  told  that  the  coming  revival  will  be  social 
in  its  service.  I  can  well  believe  that,  because  every  true 
revival  of  religion  has  borne  at  least  some  fruitage  of 
this  character.  The  first  recorded  service  of  the  Church 
after  Pentecost  had  to  do  with  a  case  of  poverty.  A 
lame  man  was  laid  at  the  gate  of  the  Temple,  because 
then  as  now  the  place  where  men  meet  God  is  the  place 
where  they  come  into  contact  with  human  need.  And 
the  gospel  of  Peter  and  John  was  equal  to  the  social 
task  of  curing  the  cause  of  the  man's  poverty,  so  that 
he  might  thenceforth  take  care  of  himself  and  no  longer 
beg  for  alms.     The  same  power  which  gave  strength  to 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  55 

the  man's  ankle  bones  so  that  he  could  walk,  gave 
strength  to  his  heart  that  he  might  enter  the  Temple  to 
praise  God.  As  I  read  Church  history,  genuine  revivals 
of  religion  and  thoroughgoing  reformations  of  society 
are  inseparably  connected.  It  was  so  in  the  sixteenth 
century;  it  was  so  in  the  evangelical  revival  of  the 
seventeenth  century;  it  was  so  in  the  great  awakening 
of  1800.  It  should  be  so  in  the  coming  revival.  Our 
Permanent  Committee  on  Evangelism  expressed  a  great 
truth  in  its  annual  report  when  it  declared,  "Unless  sin- 
ful men  and  women  are  led  to  repentance  and  faith  in 
Jesus  Christ  and  are  by  him  joined  to  the  living  Church, 
there  can  be  no  service  rendered  by  the  Church  which 
will  satisfy  God  or  be  of  value  to  society;  while  on  the 
other  hand,  the  evangelism  which  does  not  lead  men 
into  loving  and  unselfish  service  for  society  is  both  un- 
scriptural  and  dangerous.'' 

Could  we  but  discern  the  signs  of  the  times,  we  might 
discover  that  we  are  already  in  the  midst  of  a  great 
awakening,  in  some  respects  the  greatest  of  all  history. 
When  we  think  of  the  interests  at  stake,  of  the  vast 
forces  which  are  arrayed  and  the  awful  cost  of  the 
struggle,  we  should  look  forward  in  hope  to  a  compen- 
sation or  a  consummation,  which  will  show  that  the 
upheaval  has  not  been  in  vain.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  Christian  era  the  Church  was  being  formed.  Under 
the  influence  of  Greek  thought  and  Eoman  organization 
and  pagan  cults  the  Church  was  deformed  and  rendered 
impotent,  though  still  the  body  of  Christ.  The  Eef- 
ormation   restored   the   Church   in   large   part   to   her 


56  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

apostolic  norm  and  life,  and  great  has  been  her  ser- 
vice for  God  and  humanity  in  the  years  that  have  passed. 
However,  in  spite  of  her  resources  and  opportunities, 
she  has  not  been  equal  to  the  tasks  which  have  con- 
fronted her.  She  has  not  been  able  to  fulfill  her  Lord's 
commission  and  disciple  the  nations.  There  is  needed 
a  transformation  which  will  rid  the  Church  of  all  selfish 
and  worldly  aims,  and  fit  her  through  the  fullness  of  the 
Spirit  to  bring  the  kingdom  of  this  world  into  the  cap- 
tivity of  Christ.  When  the  gospel  of  a  crucified,  risen 
Christ  was  first  proclaimed,  it  gripped  the  individual 
soul  and  made  each  Christian  the  child  of  God  and  the 
heir  of  eternal  life.  In  the  succeeding  years  we  find  on 
the  pages  of  Church  history  illustrious  names,  great  per- 
sonalities, the  apostles,  the  Church  Fathers,  the  School- 
men, the  pre-Eef  ormers.  The  personal  power  of  the  gospel 
is  thus  demonstrated.  The  Eeformation,  while  it  devel- 
oped conspicuous  individual  leaders,  made  them  also  great 
national  figures.  We  naturally  associate  Luther  with 
Germany  and  Knox  with  Scotland,  and  following  the 
Eeformation  we  have  the  rise  and  progress  of  strong  and 
enduring  national  life.  Our  own  life  as  a  nation,  our 
principles,  institutions,  and  purposes,  can  be  understood 
only  in  the  light  of  Eeformation  history.  In  this 
national  consciousness  the  power  of  personality  is  not 
eliminated,  but  is  lifted  up  into  a  higher  unity  and  a 
larger  life.  We  have  now  reached  an  era  where  the 
gospel  must  serve  not  only  the  best  interests  of  per- 
sonality and  of  nationality,  but  of  a  Christian  imiver- 
sality,  a  world  brotherhood,  in  which  nations  brought 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  57 

into  close  touch  with  one  another  shall  not  attempt  to 
annihilate  one  another  like  the  warring  factions  of 
feudal  times,  but  shall  trust  one  another  and  serve  one 
another  as  members  of  a  Kingdom  into  which  shall  be 
gathered  all  tribes  and  nations,  a  Kingdom  which  is  to 
rule  over  all  and  endure  forever,  the  Kingdom  of  our 
Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ. 


THE  REFOEMATION  IN  RELATION  TO  CIVIL 
AND  RELIGIOUS  LIBERTY 

BY 

WILLIAM  H.  ROBERTS,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

The  discussion  of  the  relation  of  the  Reformation 
of  the  sixteenth  century  to  civil  and  religious  liberty 
will  be  found  at  once  important  and  inspiring. 

In  dealing  with  the  subject  it  is  necessary,  first  of 
all,  to  bring  out  clearly  the  fact  that  the  discovery  of 
the  art  of  printing,  with  movable  type,  during  the  fif- 
teenth century,  was  the  first  great  step  in  promoting 
the  Reformation.  The  earliest  printed  Bible  appeared 
between  1450  and  1455,  from  the  press  of  Johannes 
Gutenberg,  at  Mainz,  and  was  a  historic  event  of  a  most 
notable  character.  It  is  interesting  to  recall  the  fact 
that  when  copies  of  this  printed  Bible  were  first  put  on 
sale  the  vendors  were  arrested  for  witchcraft ;  the  Bibles 
themselves  were  offered  in  evidence,  the  statement  being 
made  that  it  was  impossible  to  have  produced  so  con- 
siderable a  number  of  copies,  exactly  similar  in  every 
particular,  without  the  help  of  the  Devil.  The  sufficient 
answer  to  the  charge,  however,  Avas  the  statement  of  the 
discovery  which  had  been  made.  From  1455  onward, 
for  seventy-five  years,  the  Bible  was  printed  in  many 
countries,  chiefly  in  Latin,  and  the  knowledge  of  God's 
Word  was  thus  widely  disseminated,  and  became  the 

59 


60  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

basis  of  that  clear  knowledge  of  divine  truth  which  was 
the  foundation  of  the  Eeformation.  The  Bible,  multi- 
plied by  the  printing  press,  was  a  chief  instrument  of 
the  great  movement. 

Another  important  factor  in  connection  with  the 
Eeformation  was  the  general  consensus  of  opinion 
among  all  the  Reformers  that  the  Bible  as  the  Word  of 
God  is  the  only  infallible  rule  of  faith  and  conduct. 
The  Reformers  rejected  any  supreme  authority  other 
than  that  of  God  in  his  Word.  In  all  controversies  with 
the  Roman  Catholic  authorities,  they  appealed  con- 
stantly to  the  Holy  Scriptures.  They  declared  that  the 
Bible  is  the  only  authority  as  to  what  is  sound  Chris- 
tian doctrine,  and  they  insisted  that  the  rules  of  con- 
duct found  in  the  Bible  apply  to  popes,  kings,  and  the 
nobility,  as  well  as  to  the  common  people.  Resting  on 
God's  Word  for  authority,  they  evolved  from  it  the  doc- 
trine that  all  men  ought  to  be  enfranchised  with  the 
liberty  with  which  Christ  makes  men  free.  This  lib- 
erty of  which  they  conceived  was  the  liberty  of  men  as 
the  children  of  God,  without  reference  to  class  distinc- 
tions. At  first,  these  claims  for  liberty,  either  in  Church 
or  State,  were  not  so  definite  as  they  became  later,  and 
there  was  strongly  organized  resistance  to  the  Reformers 
in  all  countries.  The  battle  in  favor  of  the  tyranny  of 
monarchs  and  of  privileged  classes  was  waged  with  great 
fierceness,  and  for  a  time  it  seemed  as  if  the  opponents 
of  the  Reformers  would  be  victors.  But  the  latter  had 
that  quality  in  them  which  we  know  as  the  perseverance 
of  the  saints.    In  the  halls  of  debate,  as  well  as  on  the 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  61 

field  of  battle,  the  adherents  of  the  Eeformation  went 
forward  resolutely,  with  a  courage  which  never  failed, 
and  laid  broad  and  deep  the  foundations  of  those  civil 
and  religious  liberties  which  are  so  large  a  possession  of 
humanity  in  this  twentieth  century. 

Civil  liberty,  which  we  consider  first,  may  be  defined 
to  be  right  of  the  individual  to  the  enjoyment  of  life, 
liberty,  and  happiness,  simply  and  solely  as  a  human 
being,  on  terms  of  equality  with  all  other  persons,  under 
the  regulations  of  righteous  law. 

In  connection  with  civil  liberty,  as  it  has  been  devel- 
oped during  the  past  three  centuries,  it  is  necessary  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  its  first  teacher  in  modern  clays 
was  John  Calvin,  of  Geneva.  Calvin  was  great  as  a 
theologian,  but  he  was  equally  great  as  a  statesman. 
Modern  parliamentary  government  found  in  him  not 
only  a  founder,  but  also  a  clear  and  dominant  thinker 
and  advocate.  His  teachings  as  to  the  rights  of  the 
representatives  of  the  people,  as  over  against  those  of 
kings  and  emperors,  were  accepted  in  all  Eeformation 
lands.  They  were  regarded  as  authoritative  in  Scot- 
land, Holland,  France,  and  Switzerland,  during  the 
sixteenth  century,  and  during  the  seventeenth  by  the 
English  Puritans  also.  It  was  Calvin  who  first  promul- 
gated not  only  the  fundamentals  of  popular  representa- 
tive government,  but  also  the  idea  of  a  written  consti- 
tution; and  both  conceptions  were  based  upon  his  con- 
ception of  the  teachings  of  God's  Word. 

Civil  liberty  is  what?  During  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury  the   principal    development   in    the   Hue   of   civil 


62  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

liberty  was  achieved  through  the  independence  of  the 
x^merican  Colonies  of  Great  Britain,  and  the  adoption 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  of  America. 
In  the  year  1788  the  only  other  federal  republic  in 
existence  was  the  Swiss  confederation.  To-day  more 
than  half  the  surface  of  the  globe  is  occupied  by 
republics,  and,  if  the  British  Empire  be  counted  in, 
with  its  thoroughly  democratic  tendencies,  three  fourths 
of  the  population  of  the  globe  is  under  influences  which 
make  for  "government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for 
the  people."  Calvin's  political  ideas  seem  to  have  won 
out  all  over  the  world,  and  permanent  victory  will  be 
secured  for  them,  it  is  hoped,  through  the  present  war. 
As  we  consider  religious  liberty  it  is  important,  first 
of  all,  to  understand  that  its  beginnings  were,  in  a 
peculiar  sense,  the  results  of  the  great  Protestant 
Eeformation  as  a  religious  movement.  Eeligious 
liberty  is,  fundamentally,  the  right  of  the  individual 
Christian  to  his  own  interpretation  of  what  the  Holy 
Scriptures  teach  as  to  faith  and  duty.  This  right 
was  not  recognized  by  law  in  any  country  in  the  world 
at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  authority 
of  the  Church,  and  of  the  pope  as  the  head  of  the 
Church,  was  the  supreme  and  only  power  to  determine 
the  meaning  of  the  Bible.  In  every  so-called  Christian 
land,  the  acceptance  of  one  form  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion was  legally  required  of  all  persons,  and  in  all 
these  lands  the  authority  of  the  pope  of  Eome  as  the 
head  of  the  Church  was  recognized  by  the  civil  power. 
The  hierarchy  of  the  Eoman  Church  was  further  pos- 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  63 

sessed  of  so  absolute  a  power  that  it  could  require  the 
penalty  of  death  for  heresy  to  be  imposed  by  the  State. 
It  is  true  that  men  such  as  Wyclif  in  England  and  Huss 
in  Bohemia  denied  the  authority  of  the  pope  long  before 
the  Eeformation^  and  insisted  upon  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures as  the  only  supreme  rule  of  faith  and  life;  but 
they,  and  those  who  thought  as  they  did,  were  perse- 
cuted and  many  of  them  put  to  death. 

The  first  great  step  in  securing  religious  liberty  was 
taken  by  Martin  Luther  on  December  10,  1520,  when 
he  burned  in  public  the  papal  bull,  or  decree,  which 
threatened  him  with  excommunication  for  heretical 
opinions.  It  is  true  that  Luther  began  his  work  by 
nailing  Ninety-five  Theses  to  the  door  of  the  cathedral 
at  Wittenberg,  Germany,  on  October  31,  1517,  and  yet 
it  was  the  burning  of  the  pope's  bull  which  declared  his 
separation  from  the  Church  of  Rome.  Luther  performed 
many  other  acts  which  emphasized  his  antagonism  to 
the  papacy,  and  wrote  many  treatises  upon  Christian 
doctrine,  one  of  which,  "The  Liberty  of  the  Christian 
Man,"  written  in  1520,  is  a  definite  utterance  concern- 
ing the  freedom  of  Christians  in  Jesus  Christ.  Indeed 
the  Eeformers  all  took  as  their  motto  the  words  of  Paul 
to  the  Galatians,  "Stand  fast  therefore  in  the  liberty 
wherewith  Christ  has  made  us  free,  and  be  not  en- 
tangled again  with  the  yoke  of  bondage." 

The  struggle  in  Germany  for  religious  liberty  begun 
by  Luther  led  to  bloody  wars,  extending  over  more  than 
a  century.     It  was  not  until   1C48   that  the  right  of 


64  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

Germans  to  be  Protestant  in  religion  was  acknowledged 
in  that  country. 

In  Switzerland  the  struggle  for  religious  liberty  be- 
gan with  the  teachings  of  Ulrich  Zwingli,  and  here,  too, 
bloody  strife  ensued  between  Catholics  and  Protestants. 
Zwingli  was  killed  at  a  battle  fought  at  Ivappel  in  1531. 

In  France  the  struggle  for  religious  liberty  was  bitter 
with  wars  between  the  Huguenots  and  the  Catholics, 
and  found  a  culmination  in  the  Massacre  of  St.  Bar- 
tholomew in  1572,  when  thousands  upon  thousands  of 
Protestants  were  massacred.  Protestantism  was  toler- 
ated in  France  from  1598  to  1685,  but  renewed  perse- 
cution under  Louis  XIV,  after  1685,  drove  out  of  the 
country  at  least  five  hundred  thousand  persons,  and  the 
refugees  were  scattered  to  every  country  of  Europe  and 
to  the  American  colonies,  and  were  a  blessing  wherever 
they  went.  The  restoration  of  Protestantism  was  de- 
creed by  Napoleon  Bonaparte  in  1802. 

In  England  at  the  time  of  the  Eeformation,  many 
martyrs  had  already  suffered  for  their  loyalty  to  religious 
liberty.  Among  these  the  names  which  stand  out  most 
notably  are  those  of  William  Tyndale,  who  translated 
the  New  Testament  into  English  in  1525,  and  Arch- 
bishop Cranmer,  of  the  Church  of  England.  When 
Queen  Elizabeth  came  to  the  throne,  though  she  was  a 
Protestant,  there  was  no  real  religious  liberty  in  Eng- 
land for  persons  who  declined  to  conform  to  the  Church 
of  England.  It  is  only  in  recent  years  that  the  rights 
of  dissenters  have  been  recognized,  and  Lloyd  George, 
present  premier  of  England,  was  first  elected  to  Parlia- 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  65 

ment  on  an  issue  raised  with  the  established  Church. 

In  Scothmd  the  struggle  for  religious  liberty  began 
with  the  martyrdom  of  Patrick  Hamilton  in  1528,  and 
reached  the  first  stage  of  its  progress  through  the  Eef- 
ormation,  led  by  John  Knox,  in  15G0.  Scotland,  how- 
ever, was  not  finally  free  from  ecclesiastical  tyranny 
until  1689,  on  the  advent  of  William  of  Orange  to  the 
throne  of  Britain. 

In  Holland  the  struggle  for  liberty  was  long  and 
arduous.  The  first  mart3Ts  suffered  in  1523.  The 
people  resisted  both  Spanish  and  Eoman  Catholic 
tyranny,  led  by  such  men  as  William  the  Silent,  and 
finally  secured  independence  in  1579.  Holland  was 
often  the  refuge  for  English  dissenters,  and  it  was  from 
Holland  that  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  in  1620  set  sail  for 
New  England. 

In  other  European  lands  such  as  Italy,  Spain,  and 
Portugal,  the  Eeformation  failed,  and  religious  liberty 
was  unknown  in  any  measure  until  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. In  Eussia  there  is  to-day  nominal  religious  lib- 
erty. Because  of  the  sudden  rise  of  the  republic,  the 
Greek  Catholic  Church,  however,  is  the  National  Church, 
and  it  remains  to  be  seen  what  sort  of  liberty  will  be 
guaranteed  for  the  future. 

Toleration  is  not  liberty.  The  only  country  in  the 
civilized  world  in  which  there  has  been  for  nearly  a 
century  absolute  religious  liberty  is  the  United  States 
of  x\merica.  America  has  now  no  State  Churcli.  At 
first,  certain  of  the  colonies,  as  Virginia,  recognized 
the  Church  of  England  as  the  State  Church,  and  Massa- 


66  THE    PR0TE8TANT    REFORMATION 

cliusetts  and  Connecticut  established  the  Congregational 
Chnrch  as  such.  The  Congregational  establishment  of 
religion  was  abolished  in  Connecticut  in  1818,  and  in 
Massachusetts  in  1831:.  The  only  American  colony  in 
which  there  was  real  liberty  of  religious  opinion  from 
the  beginning,  was  that  of  Pennsylvania,  and  the  in- 
scription on  the  Liberty  Bell,  cast  in  1752,  "Proclaim 
liberty  throughout  the  land  unto  all  the  inhabitants 
thereof,''  Lev.  25 :  10,  was  prophetic  of  the  coming  of 
the  day  when  there  would  be  true  liberty  in  the  United 
States. 

It  is  evident  from  the  above  facts  that  the  connection 
between  Church  and  State  was  the  main  source  of  the 
power  which  denied  religious  liberty  to  men  and  women. 
The  Eonian  Catholic  Church,  it  should  be  said,  has 
always  declared  that  its  duty  is  simply  to  find  men  guilty 
of  heresy,  and  then  to  turn  them  over  to  the  State  for 
final  punishment.  But  the  State  in  Europe  at  the  time 
of  the  Reformation  was  completely  under  the  domina- 
tion of  the  Eoman  Church,  and  the  laws  of  the  State 
were  so  constructed  and  construed  as  to  punish  heresy 
with  death. 

The  first  Christian  leader  to  take  the  step  which 
made  possible  the  securing  of  true  religious  liberty  in 
America,  was  the  Baptist,  Roger  Williams,  the  founder 
of  the  Colony  of  Rhode  Island.  The  first  organized 
American  Cliurch,  however,  which  declared  as  a  Church 
for  religious  liberty,  was  the  Presbyterian.  This  was  by 
an  act  adopted  by  the  General  Synod,  at  Philadelphia, 
Pennsylvania,  in  1729. 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  67 

In  this  twentieth  century,  throughout  the  English- 
speaking  world,  there  is  liberty  of  opinion.  The  only 
form  that  religious  intolerance  assumes  is  the  assump- 
tion on  the  part  of  certain  Churches  that  they  occupy  in 
matters  of  Church  order  and  government  a  place  superior 
to  that  of  certain  other  Churches.  There  is  still  limita- 
tions upon  religious  liberty  in  many  European  countries. 
It  is  hoped  that  the  time  will  soon  come  when  the  con- 
ditions of  religious  liberty  everywhere  may  be  such  as 
appear  in  the  twenty-third  chapter  of  the  Confession 
of  Faith  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  in  the  following 
words : 

"It  is  the  duty  of  civil  magistrates  to  protect  the 
Church  of  our  Common  Lord,  without  giving  the  prefer- 
ence to  an}^  denomination  of  Christians  above  the  rest, 
in  such  a  manner  that  all  ecclesiastical  persons  what- 
ever shall  enjoy  the  full,  free,  and  unquestioned  liberty 
of  discharging  every  part  of  their  sacred  functions,  with- 
out violence  or  danger.  And,  as  Jesus  Christ  hath  ap- 
pointed a  regular  government  and  discipline  in  his 
Church,  no  law  of  any  commonwealth  should  inter- 
fere with,  let,  or  hinder,  the  due  exercise  thereof,  among 
the  voluntary  members  of  any  denomination  of  Christ- 
ians, according  to  their  own  profession  and  belief.  It  is 
the  duty  of  civil  magistrates  to  protect  the  person  and 
good  name  of  all  their  people,  in  such  an  effectual  man- 
ner as  that  no  person  be  suffered,  either  upon  pretense 
of  religion  or  of  infidelity,  to  offer  any  indignity,  vio- 
lence, abuse,  or  injury,  to  any  other  person  whatsoever; 
and  to  take  order,  that  all  religious  and  ecclesiastical 


68  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

x\ssemblies  be  held  without  molestation  or  disturbance." 
This  declaration  adopted  in  1788,  at  Philadelphia,  is 
the  true  law  of  religious  liberty.  That  it  will  become 
in  time  the  law  for  both  State  and  Church  everywhere  is 
heartily  believed.  The  reason  for  this  faith  is,  that  the 
Eeformation  was  and  is  a  movement  produced  within 
men,  a  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  Eeformation  was 
and  is  full  of  divine  life.  Based  upon  the  Bible  as 
the  Magna  Charta  of  true  lil)erty,  it  will  progress  until 
it  fills  the  earth  with  the  grace  and  glory  of  Christian 
freedom. 


THE    SERVICE    IN    THE    CENTEAL   BAPTIST 
CHURCH,  REV.  W.  A.  HEWITT,  PASTOR 

William  H.  Scott,  elder  in  the  Market  Square  Church, 
Germantown,  Pennsylvania,  President  of  the  Board  of 
Publication  and  Sahbath  School  Work,  a  commissioner 
to  the  General  Assembly,  and  a  member  of  its  Com- 
mittee on  the  Celebration  of  the  Four  Hundredth  Anni- 
versary of  the  Reformation,  presided. 

The  addresses  were  delivered  by  Henry  Sloane  Coffin, 
D.D.,  pastor  of  the  Madison  Avenue  Presbyterian 
Church,  'New  York  City,  and  Associate  Professor  of 
Homiletics  in  the  Union  Theological  Seminary,  and  by 
Frederick  W.  Loetscher,  Ph.D.,  D.D.,  Professor  of 
Church  History  in  Princeton  Theological  Seminary. 


MESSAGES  FEOM  LUTHEE  FOE  OUE  DAY 

BY 
HENRY   SLOANE  COFFIN,   D.D. 

In  Martin  Luther  God  gave  the  world  a  religious 
genius^  who  is  destined  to  stand  for  all  time  among 
the  major  prophets  of  the  Christian  faith.  In  his  com- 
plex personality  discordant  elements  jostle  one  another. 
Mentally  he  was  a  child  of  his  age,  sharing  to  a  large 
degree  its  superstitions  and  prejudices  as  well  as  its 
aspirations,  and  voicing  so  accurately  its  feelings  that 
his  message  won  instant  popularity.  Yet  he  so  far 
transcended  his  age  as  to  become  one  of  the  foremost 
makers  of  the  modern  world,  a  force  whose  creative 
energy  is  by  no  means  yet  exhausted.  In  character,  he 
was  a  combination  of  many  serious  faults,  faults  of  taste 
and  of  temper,  and  of  heroic  virtues.  He  was  coarse, 
abusive,  obstinate,  domineering,  passionate,  yet  also 
intrepid,  generous,  broadly  human,  sincere,  with  high 
spirits  that  bubbled  over  in  humor,  and  an  intensity  of 
devotion  to  his  purpose  that  made  him  an  incalculable 
power.  He  was  guilty  of  two  ugly  moral  blunders :  the 
incitement  to  bloody  reprisals  against  the  rebellious 
peasants,  and  acquiesce  in  the  bigamy  of  Philip  of 
Hesse ;  yet  he  is  to  be  credited  with  a  fearless  conscience 
seldom  equaled  in  history.  But  what  gave  him,  a  mere 
preacher  and  theological  professor  in  a  small  out-of-the- 

71 


72  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

way  Saxon  town,  his  abiding  influence  was  his  unique 
discovery  of  the  living  God,  whose  good  pleasure  it  was 
in  him,  as  truly  as  in  his  great  master,  Paul,  to  reveal 
his  Son. 

In  a  letter  that  comes  down  from  his  student  days 
Luther  expressed  the  wish  that  instead  of  philosophy 
he  might  be  studying  theology,  adding,  "I  mean  that 
theology  which  searches  out  the  meat  of  the  nut,  the 
kernel  of  the  grain,  and  the  marrow  of  the  bones."  Such 
was  his  main  contribution,  to  discover  the  essential  thing 
in  the  Christian  religion,  to  get  at  and  bring  into  the 
heart  the  Christian  faith.  Commenting  on  the  famil- 
iar words  of  the  First  Commandment,  he  asked,  "What 
is  it  to  have  a  God?"  and  answered:  "To  have  a  God 
is  nothing  else  than  to  trust  and  believe  in  him  with 
all  our  hearts.  Whatever,  then,  thy  heart  clings  to 
(I  say)  and  relies  upon,  that  is  properly  thy  God." 
Such  unwavering  trust  of  the  heart  in  the  God  whom 
he  found  in  the  Christ  of  the  Bible  was  for  Luther 
the  Avhole  of  religion.  In  throwing  everything  else  aside, 
as  relatively  trifling,  he  recovered  the  Christian  faith 
for  mankind. 

Luther  was  careful  to  distinguish  what  he  meant  by 
faith.  "There  are,"  he  wrote,  "two  kinds  of  believing 
— first,  a  believing  about  God  which  means  that  I  be- 
lieve that  what  is  said  of  God  is  true.  This  faith  is 
rather  a  form  of  knowledge  or  observation  than  a  faith. 
There  is,  secondly,  a  believing  in  God  wdiich  means  that 
I  put  my  trust  in  him,  give  myself  up  to  thinking  that 
I  can  have  dealings  with  him,  and  believe  without  any 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  73 

doubt  that  he  will  be  and  do  to  me  according  to  the 
things  said  of  him.  Such  faith  which  throws  itself  upon 
God,  whether  in  life  or  in  death,  alone  makes  a  Chris- 
tian man." 

Such  faith  Luther  preached,  and  of  such  faith  he 
became  the  living  embodiment.  Many  things  that  he  be- 
lieved are  now  obsolete;  at  a  number  of  points  he  was 
inconsistent  with  his  own  fundamental  conviction;  but 
wherever  he  acted  in  thorough  loyalty  to  it,  he  is 
increasingly  approved  as  right,  and  he  remains  a  mag- 
nificently contagious  believer  in  the  God  and  Father  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

There  are  three  aspects  of  this  fundamental  convic- 
tion which  repay  our  special  study  in  this  anniversary 
year :  Luther's  faith  in  the  self -evidencing  character  of 
religious  truth,  his  faith  in  Christian  men,  and  his 
faith  in  the  historic  Christ. 

1.  His  faith  in  the  self-evidencing  power  of  religious 
truth.  In  all  ages  devout  minds  have  asked  themselves : 
"How  may  I  attain  certainty?  How  may  I  be  sure 
that  I  know  God?"  The  Eoman  Church  had  replied: 
"Truth  is  a  mystery  which  lies  beyond  human  power 
to  test  and  prove.  These  mysteries  are  contained  in  the 
Bible  and  can  be  interpreted  correctly  only  by  the 
Church  through  its  popes  and  councils."  Luther  from 
his  reading  of  the  Bible,  found  God's  truth  flashing  out 
on  him  and  authenticating  itself  to  his  own  soul.  It  is 
often  said  that  the  difference  between  Romanists  and 
Protestants  is  that  the  former  accept  as  their  authority 
an  infallible  Church,  and  the  latter  an  infallible  Book. 


74  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

But  that  is  misleading.  The  real  difference  lies  in  two 
contrasted  views  of  truth.  To  the  Eoman  Catholic 
truth  is  so  hard  to  recognize  that  only  a  divinely  accred- 
ited teacher  can  guarantee  it  to  us;  to  Luther  truth 
was  so  clear  that  conscience  once  faced  with  it  cannot 
but  acknowledge  it.  Augustine  had  stated  the  tradi- 
tional position  when  he  wrote,  "I  would  not  believe  in 
the  gosi^el  without  the  authority  of  the  Church.^'  Luther, 
much  as  he  respected  Augustine,  revolted:  "Thou  must 
not  place  thy  decision  on  the  pope  or  any  other;  thou 
must  thyself  be  so  skillful  that  thou  canst  say,  '^God 
says  this,  not  that/  Dost  thou  stand  upon  pope  or 
councils?  Then  the  Devil  may  at  once  knock  a  hole 
in  thee  and  insinuate,  "^How  if  it  were  false?  How  if 
they  have  erred?'  Then  thou  art  laid  low  at  once. 
Th'erefore  thou  must  bring  conscience  into  play,  that 
thou  mayst  boldly  and  defiantly  say,  ^That  is  God's 
Word;  on  that  will  I  risk  body  and  life,  and  a  hundred 
thousand  necks  if  I  had  them.'  Therefore  no  one  shall 
turn  me  from  the  Word  which  God  teaches  me,  and  that 
must  I  know  as  certainly  as  that  two  and  three  make 
five,  or  that  an  ell  is  longer  than  a  half.  That  is  cer- 
tain, and  though  all  the  world  speak  to  the  contrary, 
still  I  know  that  it  is  not  otherwise.  Who  decides  me 
there  ?  'No  man,  but  only  the  truth  which  is  so  perfectly 
certain  that  nobody  can  deny  it."  The  evidence  of  a 
revelation  is  simply  that  it  reveals,  exactly  as  the  evi- 
dence of  daylight  is  its  ability  to  make  us  see.  No 
amount  of  external  signs,  miracles,  or  fulfilled  prophe- 
cies, can  make  anything  convincing  that  does  not  grip 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  75 

US  by  its  own  cogency.  The  evidence  of  GocVs  truth,  in 
the  Bible  or  from  any  quarter,  is  its  power  to  make  us 
see  God  and  live  with  him,  the  Fact  of  facts  in  a  world 
of  facts. 

Luther  found  God's  self -evidencing  truth  primarily 
in  the  Bible;  but  that  did  not  mean  that  to  him  the 
two  were  identical.  The  Bible  is  the  literary  record  of 
events  through  which  God  unveils  himself.  Luther 
bowled  before  God's  self -revelation,  but  he  was  singu- 
larly free  in  his  handling  of  the  Scriptures,  in  which 
as  the  soul  in  the  body,  God's  Word  is  contained.  Speak- 
ing of  Genesis,  he  said,  ''What  though  Moses  never  wrote 
it?"  He  considered  the  books  of  Chronicles  less  reliable 
history  than  the  books  of  the  Kings,  and  he  thought 
the  present  form  of  the  books  of  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and 
Hosea,  probably  due  to  later  hands.  He  asserted  that 
the  prophets  had  not  always  given  the  kings  of  Israel 
sound  political  advice.  In  the  'New  Testament  he  dis- 
tinguished between  ''chief  books"  and  those  of  less  mo- 
ment, and  called  The  Epistle  of  James  a  letter  of  straw 
in  comparison  with  the  writings  of  Paul  and  of  John. 
It  is  quite  certain  that  Martin  Luther  could  not  be 
licensed  in  some  of  our  presbyteries,  and  could  not  sub- 
scribe to  some  doctrinal  deliverances  of  recent  Assem- 
blies. He  read  the  Bible  with  the  eyes  of  his  own 
spiritually  enlightened  heart,  exactly  as  his  Lord  had 
read  the  Old  Testament;  and  he  found  God  everywhere 
through  it,  as  the  soul  pervades  the  body.  But  the 
Bible  itself  was  not  to  him  God's  truth;  that  was  the 
gospel  or  the  Christ  in  the  Bible.     Only  in  the  books 


76  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

where  he  found  Christ  did  he  recognize  authoritative 
Scripture.  "That  which  does  not  teach  Christ,"  he 
wrote  in  his  vigorous  fashion,  "is  not  apostolic,  though 
Peter  or  Paul  should  have  said  it;  on  the  contrary  that 
which  preaches  Christ  is  apostolic,  even  if  it  should  come 
from  Judas,  Annas,  Pilate,  or  Herod." 

Here  is  no  doctrine  of  Biblical  inerrancy  stultifying 
free  investigation.  Here  is  the  liberty  of  the  Spirit 
bearing  witness  within  him  to  the  divine  message 
through  the  Book.  Matters  of  authorship,  of  historical 
accuracy,  of  science,  are  left  completely  open  for  scholar- 
ship. God's  life  is  imparted  to  the  believing  soul 
through  the  literary  record,  whoever  wrote  it,  whether 
the  alleged  events  occurred  exactly  as  recorded  or  not, 
and  whether  the  scientific  views  held  by  the  Scripture 
writers  be  correct  or  incorrect.  Needless  to  add  that 
had  our  own  Presbyterian  communion  been  as  Pro- 
testant as  Martin  Luther  in  its  attitude  to  Scripture, 
the  controversies  of  recent  years  would  never  have 
occurred.  Until  we  recover  his  spiritual  freedom,  until 
we  rise  to  his  greater  faith  in  the  self-evidencing  power 
of  God's  truth,  we  shall  not  fulfill  our  mission  to  the 
thinking  men  and  women  of  our  day.  To  the  Eoman 
Catholic  the  Bible  is  a  book  of  laws  and  propositions 
to  be  obeyed  and  believed;  to  Luther  it  was  a  book  of 
life,  quickening  him  with  its  own  vitality.  The  life 
he  attained  was  its  own  indisputable  evidence:  he  was 
alive  unto  God  through  Jesus  Christ  in  the  Scriptures. 

2.  His  faith  in  Christian  men.  Luther  struck  a  pro- 
digious blow  for  democracy,  little  as  he  himself  realized 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  77 

its  full  consequences,  when  in  his  "Address  to  the  Ger- 
man Nobility"  he  tore  down  the  wall  that  separated 
clergy  and  laymen,  the  spiritual  and  the  temporal 
estates,  and  declared,  ''All  Christians  are  truly  of  the 
spiritual  estate  and  there  is  no  difference  among  them, 
save  of  office  alone."  It  was  the  logical  conclusion 
from  his  conviction  that  God's  truth  is  accessible  to 
every  believer.  Each  man  is  a  priest  with  direct  rela- 
tions with  God,  each  a  pope  hearing  for  himself  the 
authoritative  word  of  God.  His  treatise  on  "Christian 
Liberty,"  one  of  the  finest  things  he  ever  penned,  lays 
down  two  famous  propositions:  "A  Christian  man  is 
the  most  free  lord  of  all,  and  subject  to  none;  a  Chris- 
tian man  is  the  most  dutiful  servant  of  all  and  subject 
to  everyone."  Here  is  religious  individualism  at  its 
fullest,  and  here  is  religious  solidarity  at  its  closest. 
Eoman  Catholicism  had  supplied  all  manner  of  checks 
and  restraints  to  control  men  and  to  help  them  to  sup- 
press themselves.  Luther  believed  in  the  duty  of  a 
Christian  man  to  be  himself  and  to  give  himself  free 
expression.     He  encouraged 

"the  perpetual  play 
Of  every  faculty  that  heaven  bestows." 

Timorous  souls  have  always  complained  that  there  can 
be  no  agreement  where  every  man  freely  thinks  for 
himself,  and  no  harmonious  corporate  life  where  each 
gives  rein  to  his  own  impulses.  Luther  believed  that 
truth,  being  one,  would  guarantee  all  needed  unity 
among  those  who  obey  it,  and  that  whoever  is  ruled 


78r  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

by  the  Spirit  of  Christ  will  bind  himself  most  securely 
to  all  his  brethren  in  helpful  service.  He  phrased  it 
exquisitely  when  he  said^  "I  will,  therefore,  give  my- 
self as  a  sort  of  Christ  to  my  neighbor,  as  Christ  has 
given  himself  to  me;  and  will  do  nothing  in  this  life 
except  what  I  see  will  be  needful,  advantageous,  and 
wholesome  for  my  neighbor."  He  insisted  on  both  the 
liberty  and  the  unity  of  the  Spirit. 

It  is  but  just  to  point  out  that  historical  circum- 
stances interfered  with  Luther's  ideal  and  led  him  into 
inconsistencies.  He  found  the  early  protectors  of  his 
movement  among  the  German  princes  and  nobles,  and 
he  allowed  them,  perhaps  not  unnaturally,  to  control 
the  evangelical  churches.  The  dire  consequences  to  the 
spiritual  freedom  of  those  churches  are  seen  conspicu- 
ously in  Germany  to-day.  State  domination  had  throt- 
tled the  gospel  liberty  of  the  Church. 

As  a  miner's  son,  the  peasants  expected  his  sympathy, 
and  they  freely  gave  him  theirs  in  his  attacks  upon 
ecclesiastical  tyranny.  But  like  many  another  who  has 
risen  from  lowly  origins,  he  grew  away  from  their  point 
of  view.  The  darkest  blot  on  his  career  is  his  urgent 
call  to  the  princes  to  put  down  with  a  stern  hand  the 
peasant  uprising.  Some  of  his  sentences  are  shocking : 
"What  is  more  ill-mannered  than  a  foolish  peasant  or  a 
common  man  when  he  has  enough  and  is  full  and  gets 
power  in  his  hands?"  "The  severity  and  rigor  of  the 
sword  are  as  necessary  for  the  people  as  eating  and 
drinking,  yes,  as  life  itself."  "The  ass  needs  to  be 
beaten,  and  the  populace  needs  to  be  controlled  with  a 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  79 

strong  hand.    God  knew  this  well,  and  therefore  he  gave 
the  rulers  not  a  fox's  tail,  but  a  sword." 

It  is  a  lamentable  fact  that  only  rarely  has  Prot- 
estant Christianity  been  a  sturdy  force  among  the 
working  classes,  and  that  it  is  scarcely  such  in  any  land 
to-day.  Even  in  our  country,  with  its  complete  separa- 
tion of  Church  and  State,  and  in  those  communions 
which  are  most  democratic  in  their  organization,  the 
mass  of  the  toilers  are  not  its  adherents.  The  Prot- 
estant churches,  like  Luther,  have  not  been  sympathetic 
with  the  disinherited  in  their  aspirations  for  social  jus- 
tice, and  the  result  is  that  they  are  despised  as  negli- 
gible factors  by  the  leaders  in  social  advance.  Our 
churches,  despite  our  good  intentions,  are  not  making 
for  social  unity  but  for  division.  In  how  very  few  of 
them  do  rich  and  poor,  capitalist  and  laborer,  meet  side 
by  side!  It  is  noticeable  that  there  are  practically  no 
artisans  in  the  present  General  Assembly.  Many  of  our 
officer  bearers,  while  they  have  better  taste  than  to 
employ  Luther's  language,  assume  his  superior  and 
domineering  attitude  toward  the  immigrant  industrial 
population  who  are  the  counterparts  in  our  society  of 
the  peasants  of  his  age.  During  strikes,  elders  and 
Sunday-school  superintendents  have  been  known  to  ex- 
press themselves  not  altogether  differently  from  Luther, 
when  he  wrote :  "Our  peasants  want  to  share  the  goods 
of  others  and  keep  their  own.  Fine  Christians  they  are ! 
I  doubt  whether  there  are  any  devils  left  in  hell,  for  they 
all  seem  to  have  entered  into  the  peasants,  and  passion 
has  gone  beyond  all  bounds."     Undoubtedly  the  peas- 


80  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

ants,  like  many  strikers  since,  were  not  without  serious 
faults,  but  the  neighborly  spirit  of  the  gospel,  which 
Luther  knew  so  well  how  to  commend,  demands  that  the 
Church  of  Christ  keep  open-minded  and  open-hearted 
to  the  pleas  of  all  the  wronged  and  the  weak,  and  sym- 
pathize with  the  restless,  for  are  we  not  also  seeking  to 
turn  our  world  upside  down  until  it  stand,  as  God 
means  it  shall,  with  the  love  side  up? 

Further,  Luther's  combination  of  his  cause  with  that 
of  the  German  princes,  and  his  own  intense  nationalism, 
led  him  to  lose  sight  of  the  international  character  of  the 
Christian  Church.  Protestantism  has  always  been  or- 
ganized on  national  lines  and  the  ties  between  the 
churches  have  been  very  loose.  It  has  lost  its  power 
to  hold  nations  together;  and  the  present  world  catas- 
trophe, in  which  the  two  protagonists  are  Protestant 
Germany  and  Protestant  Britain,  is  in  one  aspect  a 
fearful  condemnation  of  our  Protestant  Christianity. 
To  be  sure  the  Eoman  Church  with  its  supernational 
organization  is  almost  as  powerless,  but  it  has  machinery 
that  can  be  set  in  motion  to  accomplish  some  helpful 
ends.  The  pope  is  said  to  have  been  the  means  of  re- 
storing, at  least  in  part,  the  deported  Belgians,  and  the 
cardinals  from  warring  nations  come  together  in  Eome 
so  that  the  universality  of  the  Church  is  given  some 
expression.  Protestantism  lacks  adequate  international, 
or  rather  supernational,  organization.  Worse  yet,  most 
Protestant  Christians  are  not  conscious  that  their  loyalty 
to  the  Church  universal  is  a  prior  loyalty  to  their  devo- 
tion to  country.     They  forget  that  German  and  Ameri- 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  81 

can  Christians  have  more  in  common  than  either  have 
with  non-Christian  fellow  countrymen,  for  the  unsearch- 
able riches  of  Christ  transcend  our  wealthiest  national 
heritage  apart  from  him.  They  lose  sight  of  one  aspect 
of  our  commission,  the  ministry  of  reconciliation,  so 
that  while  we  discharge  to  the  full  our  obligations  as 
citizens  and  as  loyal  patriots  of  our  fatherlands,  we  dare 
not  cease  to  fulfill  this  heavenly  calling.  It  is  pathetic 
that  while  little  groups  of  international  socialists  meet 
together,  seeking  some  basis  on  which  this  hideous  car- 
nage may  be  ended,  Protestant  Christendom  has  no 
means  of  bringing  its  leaders  face  to  face  to  look  at 
the  situation  as  servants  of  Christ,  and  to  employ  the 
legitimate  influence  of  our  large  numbers  and  command- 
ing positions  to  hasten  a  just  peace. 

3.  His  faith  in  the  historic  Christ.  To  Luther  the 
Christ  of  the  gospels  was  the  controlling  revelation  of 
God.  "Wie  must  neither  worship  nor  seek  after  any 
God,  save  the  God  who  is  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ."  Both  before  and  since  his  time,  it  has  been 
the  custom  to  gather  from  the  world  about  us  what 
intimations  it  discloses  of  deity:  this  is  called  natural 
religion;  then  to  add  to  this  portrait  the  details  that 
are  found  in  the  Bible,  often  placing  proof  texts  from 
Leviticus  or  Ecclesiastes  on  the  same  level  with  those 
taken  from  the  Gospels  or  the  writings  of  Paul.  The 
result  is  that  the  distinctive  Christian  conception  of 
God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ  is  obscured  by  other, 
and  sometimes  altogether  incongruous,  representations  of 
him.     Luther  insisted  that  the  Alpha  and  the  Omega 


82  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

of  our  knowledge  of  the  God  with  whom  w^e  have  to  do 
for  our  salvation  is  Jesus  Christ.  "Begin  by  applying 
thy  skill  and  study  to  Christ;  there  also  let  them  con- 
tinue fixed,  and  if  thine  own  thoughts,  or  reason,  or 
some  one  else  guide  and  direct  thee  otherwise,  only  close 
thine  eyes  and  say:  I  must  and  will  know  of  no  other 
God,  save  in  my  Lord  Christ.  See,  there  is  open  to  me 
my  Father's  heart,  wdll,  and  work,  and  I  know  him.  It 
is  the  only  way  of  transacting  with  God,  that  one  make 
no  self-prompted  approach;  and  the  true  stair  or  bridge 
by  wdiich  one  may  pass  to  heaven,  that  one  remain  below 
here  and  keep  close  to  this  flesh  and  blood,  ay,  to  the 
words  and  letters  that  proceed  from  his  mouth,  by  which 
in  the  tenderest  way  he  leads  us  up  to  the  Father,  so 
that  we  find  and  feel  no  wrath  or  dreadful  form,  but 
pure  comfort  and  joy  and  peace."  Luther's  stress  is 
always  on  the  historic  Christ.  "Try  not  to  see  even 
Jesus  in  glory  until  you  have  seen  him  crucified,"  he 
wrote  to  Melanchthon. 

This  meant  a  recovery  of  the  deity  of  Jesus.  To  be 
sure,  the  Church,  then  as  now,  always  called  him  divine, 
and  assented  to  the  truth  that  in  him  all  the  fullness  of 
the  Godhead  dwelt  in  bodily  form;  but  it  nullified  that 
doctrine  by  predicating  of  God  many  un-Christianlike 
characteristics,  so  that,  in  fact,  for  the  Church  he  was 
not  the  fullness  but  a  fraction  of  the  Godhead.  Luther 
insisted  that  in  Christ  "God  has  entirely  emptied  him- 
self and  kept  nothing  wdiich  he  could  have  given  us." 
To  believe  this  is  to  think  of  God  always  in  terms  of 
Christ,  never  to  picture  him  as  loving,   or  forgiving. 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  83 

or  electing,  or  punishing,  or  rewarding,  in  any  way 
incompatible  with,  or  unlike,  Christ's  love  and  forgive- 
ness and  election  and  punishment  and  rewarding  of 
tliose  with  whom  he  dealt  in  the  days  of  his  flesh. 
Luther  thought  lightly  of  speculative  attempts  to  set 
forth  the  mode  of  our  Lord's  incarnation;  the  doctrine 
of  the  two  natures  in  one  Person  he  prized  only  when 
given  a  practical  religious  interpretation.  He  much 
preferred  such  moving  phrases  as  "Christ  the  mirror 
of  the  Father's  heart  towards  us."  Although  he  cor- 
dially accepted  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  he  disliked 
the  word  as  not  Biblical  and  much  colder  than  the  per- 
sonal word,  "God."  And  God  was  to  him  invariably 
God  in  Christ,  the  Father  he  trusted  in  the  Son,  and 
whose  Spirit  dwelt  within  him,  the  Source  of  life  and 
liljerty. 

The  Church  of  our  age  stilT  suffers  from  un-Christlike 
representations  of  God.  What  we  need  is  not  less  but 
far  greater  stress  upon  the  deity  of  the  historic  Jesus. 
In  his  name  we  repudiate  as  sheer  idolatry  anything 
imputed  to  God,  in  this  or  any  other  world,  that  is  not 
entirely  harmonious  with  God's  self-disclosure  in  the 
Son  of  his  love.  In  his  name  we  devote  ourselves  to 
embody  in  our  characters  and  in  every  institution  and 
group  in  human  society,  homes,  commercial  enterprises, 
nations,  the  mind  that  was  in  Christ,  that  God  may 
be  all  in  all.  The  wellspring  of  our  confidence  and  joy 
is  that  in  Christ  we  find  the  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth, 
the  God  of  whom  and  through  whom  and  unto  whom  are 
all  things,  made  indisputably  plain.    As  Luther  himself 


84  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

put  it :  "For  if  we  are  certain  of  this :  that  what  Jesus 
thinks^  speaks,  and  wills,  the  Father  also  wills,  then 
I  defy  all  that  may  fight  against  me.  For  here  in  Christ 
have  I  the  Father^s  heart  and  will." 

In  the  years  immediately  following  his  hold  act  in 
nailing  his  Theses  to  the  door  of  the  Castle  Church  in 
Wittenberg,  Luther  often  signed  himself,  "Brother  Mar- 
tin Eleutherius,'^  playing  upon  the  similarity  in  sound 
between  the  German  "Luther"  and  the  Greek  word, 
eleutheros,  meaning  free.  As  Brother  Martin  "Free- 
man" he  stands  endeared  in  our  memories  in  the  glori- 
ous liberty  of  a  son  of  God  whose  constraining  and 
emancipating  love  he  found  in  the  Son,  Jesus  Christ. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  EEFORMATION 

BY 

FREDERICK  W.  LOETSCHER,  Ph.D.,  D.D. 

Some  decades  ago  a  supposedly  genuine  and  previ- 
ously unknown  picture  of  Martin  Luther  was  found 
in  an  old  church  in  the  city  of  Leipzig.  It  represents 
the  Eeformer  as  he  was  in  the  year  1532,  when  the 
main  w^ork  of  his  life  had  been  accomplished.  The  por- 
trait is  not  authentic,  but  its  double  inscription  is  quite 
suggestive.  The  Latin  title,  translated,  reads,  "Doctor 
Martin  Luther,  Eestorer  of  the  Liberty  of  the  Gospel," 
Above  the  title  are  two  flaming  suns,  with  the  legend, 
"The  Voice  of  God  the  True  Light."  It  would  be  hard  to 
frame  two  formulas  of  like  brevity  that  would  more 
adequately  express  the  genius  of  the  man  and  the  char- 
acter of  his  achievement.  For  Luther  gave  back  to  the 
western  world  evangelical  liberty  through  the  Christ  of 
Holy  Scripture. 

There  are  doubtless  other  points  of  view  from  which 
this  mighty  revolution  in  the  thought  and  life  of  the 
sixteenth  century  may  be  considered.  By  the  Eoman 
Catholic  it  is  still  regarded  as  merely  one  of  many 
revolts  against  the  authority  of  the  one  and  only  true 
Church.  Others  find  in  this  great  movement  little  more 
than  an  endeavor  to  readjust  the  political  situation  in 
the  Europe  of  Charles  V,  Leo   X,  Henry  VIII,  and 

85 


86  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

Francis  I.  A  whole  school  of  modern  historians  would 
have  us  believe  that  this  ej)och-making  event  was  due 
chiefly  to  the  social  and  economic  conditions  of  that 
age.  And  indeed,  when  we  consider  the  variety  and  the 
magnitude  of  the  issues  involved,  it  is  not  strange  that 
even  after  the  lapse  of  three  centuries  there  should  still 
be  room  for  debate  as  to  the  significance  of  the  Eeforma- 
tion  and  its  place  in  the  history  of  human  progress.  But 
there  can  be  little  dispute  about  one  fact,  and  that 
fundamental  and  decisive :  Though  Ave  may  not  be  pre- 
pared to  say  that  the  Eeformation  has  given  us  the 
final  presentation  of  Christianity,  we  must  admit  that 
the  movement  proceeded  primarily  from  a  new  and  bet- 
ter understanding  of  evangelical  truth  and  that  it  pro- 
duced a  new  and  freer  life  throughout  the  western  world. 

First  of  all,  then,  let  us  look  at  some  of  the  character- 
istic effects  of  the  Eeformation  on  our  distinctively  re- 
ligious life. 

Principal  Fairbairn  once  said,  "Mans  thought  of 
God,  of  the  cause  and  end  alike  of  his  own  being  and  of 
the  universe,  is  his  most  commanding  thought;  make 
it  and  you  make  the  man."  The  history  of  religion  is 
sufficient  proof  of  this  statement.  There  have  been,  we 
may  sa}^,  four  generic  answers  to  the  question  concern- 
ing man's  relation  to  God.  Paganism,  chronologically 
the  oldest  and  still  one  of  the  most  important  attempts 
to  solve  this  problem,  teaches  that  God  is  immanent  in 
the  works  of  his  hands  in  such  wise  that  he  may  be 
worshiped  in  the  creature.  The  Infinite  exists  only  in 
the  finite,  and  hence  divine  honor  may  be  given  alike 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  87 

to  animate  and  inanimate  objects.  Islam  is  the  con- 
tradictory opposite  of  this  view  :  There  is  and  can  be  no 
communion  between  God  and  man.  Hence  fatalism, 
with  its  blind  submission  to  the  iron  decrees  of  necessity, 
becomes  the  crowning  glory  of  the  devout  Mohammedan. 
Then  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  Latin  Church  with 
her  fully  developed  hierarchy,  proclaimed  the  absolute 
need  of  the  human  priesthood;  God  transacts  with  man 
only  through  the  proper  dispensers  of  the  sacraments. 
Eomanism  puts  the  Church  between  God  and  his  peo- 
ple as  an  indispensable  medium  of  communication.  As 
earl}^  as  the  third  century  Cyprian  had  ventured  the 
assertion  that  outside  of  the  Church  there  is  no  salva- 
tion ;  Thomas  Aquinas  and  Boniface  VIII,  at  the  height 
of  the  papal  supremacy,  made  submission  to  the  Eoman 
pontiff  a  condition  of  eternal  life.  Over  against  these 
three  types  of  religious  theory  and  practice,  Protestant- 
ism places  a  principle  of  its  own,  as  profound  as  it  is 
far-reaching  in  its  consequences.  It  does  not,  like  every 
form  of  paganism,  confound  God  and  his  creation;  it 
does  not,  like  Islam,  separate  God  from  his  children; 
it  does  not,  like  Eomanism,  require  a  human  mediator 
or  visible  church  for  the  transaction  of  all  business 
between  God  and  the  sinner;  but  it  declares  that  God, 
highly  exalted  though  he  is  above  all  finite  existence, 
can  and  does  enter  into  immediate  communion  with  his 
people.  The  true  Church  is  the  congregation  of  saints, 
the  company  of  believers,  who,  through  Christ  and  the 
Holy  Spirit,  can  go  directly  to  God  himself  and  abide 


88  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

in  constant  fellowship  with  him  as  the  infinite  and 
eternal  Father. 

How  did  the  Reformation  come  to  make  this  con- 
tribution to  our  religious  freedom?  The  gift  came,  as 
is  commonly  the  case  in  similar  crises,  through  a  man, 
a  man  specially  prepared  to  be  a  prophet  of  the  Lord 
to  his  day  and  generation.  No  doubt  some  of  the  later 
leaders,  especially  Calvin  in  the  Eeformed  Church,  gave 
more  adequate  expression  to  the  new  spiritual  ideas  and 
values,  but  to  Mlartin  Luther  belongs  the  unique  honor 
of  being  not  only  the  commanding  originating  genius, 
but  also  the  popular  hero  of  the  struggle  for  evangelical 
liberty.  In  his  experience,  better  than  anywhere  else 
in  that  day,  we  see  writ  large  the  formative  principles 
of  the  Eeformation.  His  life,  in  that  springtide  of 
religious  revival,  was  an  epitome  of  the  whole  move- 
ment. 

Born  a  peasant's  son,  and  trained  in  home  and  school 
and  university  in  the  traditional  piety  of  the  closing 
decades  of  the  fifteenth  century,  Luther  was  peculiarly 
sensitive  to  religious  impressions  of  all  kinds.  He  was 
precisely  the  sort  of  youth  who  would  follow  the  famil- 
iar path  that  led  to  the  monastry  as  the  best  nursery 
of  sainthood.  "Oh,  when  will  you  ever  become  pious," 
he  asked  himself,  "and  do  enough,  that  you  may  obtain 
a  gracious  God?"  It  was  a  faithful  question,  the  very 
form  of  which  involved  him  in  those  intense  spiritual 
struggles  that  made  his  life  in  the  Erfurt  convent  first 
of  all  a  faithful  transcript  of  the  hopes  and  fears  of 
the  preceding  millennium  of  monastic  history,  but  then 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  89 

also  the  dynamic  illustration  of  those  three  creative 
ideas  that  were  destined  to  bring  forth  the  new  evangel- 
icalism. 

The  first  was  the  truth  which  his  followers  soon  pro- 
claimed as  the  article  of  a  standing  or  a  falling  Church — 
justification  by  faith  alone.  The  future  Reformer  had 
exhausted  every  means  of  the  monastic  discipline  to 
attain  peace  of  conscience,  but  all  in  vain.  "If  ever  a 
monk  gained  heaven  by  his  monkery/^  he  later  testified, 
"I  must  have  done  so.  All  the  brethren  who  knew  me 
will  bear  me  witness.  For  I  should  have  martyred 
myself,  if  I  had  kept  it  up  longer,  with  watching,  pray- 
ing, reading,  and  other  labors."  He  finally  secured  the 
sense  of  the  forgiveness  of  his  sins  when,  by  simple 
trust  in  Christ  and  acceptance  of  the  mercy  of  God 
promised  in  the  gospel,  he  won,  on  the  battle  field  of 
his  own  soul,  his  new  conviction  that  saving  faith  is 
what  he  called  "a  believing  in  God,  which  means  that 
I  put  my  trust  in  him,  give  myself  up  to  thinking  that 
I  can  have  dealings  with  him,  and  believe  without  any 
doubt  that  he  will  be  and  do  to  me  according  to  the 
things  said  of  him."  In  the  light  of  this  discovery  he 
at  once  brushed  aside  many  of  the  sophistries  and  much 
of  the  rubbish  of  the  outworn  scholasticism.  Then,  in 
1519,  in  the  memorable  debate  with  Eck,  the  champion 
of  the  medieval  traditions,  he  was  driven  to  take  another 
momentous  step.  His  opponent  cleverly  forced  him  to 
confess  that  the  famous  Council  of  Constance  that  had 
condemned  John  Huss  to  death  had  made  a  mistake. 
The  admission  had  terrified  him,  but  he  stood  immov- 


90  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

ably  firm  on  the  second  great  principle  of  his  new-found 
freedom:  the  supremacy  of  Holy  Scripture  above  all 
ecclesiastical  traditions.  The  bitter  controversies  that 
followed  led  him  to  assert  the  third  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  Protestantism,  which  now  completed  the  doc- 
trine of  the  universal  priesthood  of  believers,  namely, 
that  every  Christian  is  in  duty  bound  to  exercise  his 
right  of  private  judgment  in  his  interpretation  of  the 
Word  of  God.  In  quick  succession  in  the  year  1520,  lie 
published  epoch-making  treatises  that  illustrated  in  the 
boldest  fashion  the  consequences  of  these  three  fruitful 
ideas :  justification  by  faith  alone,  the  supreme  authority 
of  the  Word  of  God,  and  the  right  of  individual  interpre- 
tation of  the  Scriptures.  Soon  his  experience  of  re- 
ligious freedom  was  sealed  for  himself  and  for  a  host 
of  followers  by  three  mighty  deeds.  The  first  was  his 
burning  of  the  papal  bull  of  excommunication,  together 
with  a  copy  of  the  canon  law  of  the  Church.  The  second 
was  his  even  more  dramatic  testimony  at  the  Diet  of 
Worms,  where,  summoned  at  the  peril  of  life  to  answer 
for  himself,  he  confounded  his  enemies  and  achieved  a 
signal  triumph  for  evangelical  liberty  by  his  immortal 
words :  ^'Unless  I  am  refuted  by  testimonies  of  the 
Scriptures  or  by  clear  arguments  (since  I  believe  neither 
the  pope  nor  the  councils  alone,  they  having  often  erred 
and  contradicted  themselves),  I  am  captivated  by  the 
Holy  Scriptures  quoted  by  me,  and  my  conscience  is 
bound  by  the  Word  of  God;  I  cannot  and  will  not  recant 
anything  since  it  is  unsafe  to  do  aught  against  one's  con- 
science."    And  then,  to  crown  his  victory,  he  wrought 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  91 

the  greatest  labor  of  his  life,  the  work  that  revealed  the 
noblest  powers  of  his  religious  genius :  he  gave  his  fellow 
countrymen  a  translation  of  the  Bible  from  the  original 
languages  into  German,  and  thus  helped  to  secure  for 
them  their  own  emancipation  from  the  dominance  of 
the  Eoman  Catholic  Church  in  western  Europe. 

Meanwhile  Zwingli,  in  German  Switzerland,  and  later, 
in  the  second  generation  of  the  Eeformers,  Calvin  in 
France  and  French  Switzerland,  Cranmer  in  England, 
Knox  in  Scotland,  and  a  host  of  fellow  laborers  in  the 
other  lands  of  Europe,  made  themselves  heirs  of  this 
spiritual  legacy  of  the  Wittenberg  leader.  Within  a  few 
years  the  evangelical  cause  blossomed  and  bore  fruit,  as 
with  the  swiftness  and  luxuriance  of  a  tropical  plant, 
in  its  own  characteristic  confessions,  theological  systems, 
church  organizations,  discipline,  cultus,  and  life.  From 
that  day  to  this  Protestantism,  in  spite  of  all  its  defects 
and  its  many  reverses,  has  kept  on  producing  seed  after 
its  own  kind.  Its  three  creative  ideas  have  never  ceased 
to  exert  their  beneficent  influence  in  behalf  of  the  free- 
dom wherewith  Christ  has  made  us  free. 

Some  years  ago,  when  a  new  highway  was  made  in 
London,  a  number  of  old  buildings  were  cleared  away, 
leaving  the  ground  beneath  exposed  for  months  to  the 
sun  and  air.  Presently  a  remarkable  sight  drew  men 
of  science  to  the  scene.  Some  portions  of  that  soil  had 
not  felt  the  breath  of  spring  since  that  far-off  day  when 
the  banks  of  the  Thames  echoed  the  tread  of  the  Eoman 
legions.  But  now  all  sorts  of  strange  flowers  sprang  up. 
Many  of  these  were  unknown  in  England.     They  were 


92  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

evidently  plants  which  those  first  conquerors  from  the 
mainland  had  brought  over  with  them  before  the  Chris- 
tian era  began.  Buried  under  the  mass  of  brick  and 
stone,  lying  as  if  in  the  sleep  of  death  during  all  those 
centuries,  those  seeds  needed  only  the  light  and  warmth 
of  a  summer's  sun  to  make  them  disclose  their  latent 
life  and  beauty. 

"Truth  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again — 
The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers," 

and  the  three  basal  principles  of  the  Protestant  Eef orma- 
tion  often  as  they  have  been  buried  beneath  the  errors 
and  misconceptions  and  prejudices  of  men,  have  ever 
manifested  anew  their  indestructible  vitality  and  power  to 
bless  the  race  with  the  truth  and  grace  of  the  gospel  of 
Christ,  whether  in  the  Pietism  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, or  in  the  evangelical  revival  and  the  great  awaken- 
ing of  the  eighteenth  century,  or  in  the  world-wide 
Christian  missions  of  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  cen- 
turies. That  every  believer  is  a  priest,  who,  having  direct 
access  to  God  and  being  capable  of  transacting  with  God 
for  himself,  because  he  is  justified  by  faith  alone,  can 
feed  his  soul  on  the  life-giving  Word  and  interpret  the 
sacred  revelation  for  himself — this  is  the  very  essence 
of  evangelical  liberty,  and  for  this  boon  we  are  indebted, 
in  the  good  providence  of  God,  to  the  Eeformers  of 
the  sixteenth  century. 

Let  us  look  next  at  the  influence  of  the  Eeformation 
upon  our  civil  and  political  life. 

Our  historic  phrase,  "Church  and  State,"  aptly  indi- 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  93 

cates  the  position  of  honor  and  power  held  by  the 
medieval  popes  in  their  age-long  struggle  for  supremacy 
over  the  German  emperors  and  the  kings  of  Latin  Chris- 
tendom. Gregory  the  Great  and  Gregory  VII  clothed 
the  idea  of  papal  absolutism  with  ilesh  and  blood,  and 
Innocent  III,  not  shrinking  from  the  title,  "Vicar  of 
God,^'  made  his  will  supreme  throughout  Europe  from 
Constantinople  to  Iceland.  Under  him  and  some  of 
his  ablest  successors  the  despotism  of  the  Church  in  the 
religious  realm  was  equaled  only  by  its  despotism  in  the 
political  realm.  As  the  Christian  was  taught  that  he 
existed  only  for  the  Church,  so  all  peoples  and  their 
rulers  were  deemed  subjects  of  the  bishop  of  Eome  as 
God's  vicegerent  on  earth. 

In  the  political  as  in  the  spiritual  emancipation  of 
Europe  in  the  sixteenth  century  Luther  was  the  pioneer. 
The  trammels  of  the  traditional  scholasticism  could  not 
be  broken  without  shattering  at  the  same  time  the 
ecclesiastical  fetters  that  bound  the  nations  in  help- 
less submission  to  the  Eoman  Curia.  From  the  very 
first,  therefore,  German  patriotism  rallied  to  the  aid  of 
German  piety  in  the  fight  for  deliverance  from  the  yoke 
of  the  Italian  oppressor. 

But  the 'most  thorough  and  effective  work  in  this 
sphere  was  done  by  Calvin  and  the  Calvinistic  churches. 
To  be  sure,  the}^,  too,  carried  the  treasure  of  civil  and 
political  liberty  in  earthen  vessels.  We  cannot  forget 
the  burning  of  Servetus,  or  the  drowning  of  the  Swiss 
Anabaptists,  or  the  persecutions  of  the  Eoman  Catholics 
in   England,   or  the  exiling  of   Eoger   Williams   from 


94  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

Massachusetts  Bay  Colony.  Truly,  state  toleration  of 
religious  dissent  lias  been  a  plant  of  slow  growth.  But 
we  must  insist  that  we  ought  not  to  judge  a  system  by 
what  it  has  in  common  with  its  predecessors,  but  at 
least  mainly  by  that  which  distinguishes  it  from  these. 
N'ow  Calvin's  principles  of  ecclesiastical  polity  were  such 
that  they  necessarily  tended  toward  the  establishment 
of  an  ampler  civil  liberty.  He  demanded  autonomy  for 
the  Church,  that  is,  the  right  of  the  Christian  congre- 
gation to  govern  itself  under  the  sole  headship  of  Christ. 
He  proclaimed  the  parity  of  the  clergy  against  the  pre- 
latical  hierarchy,  and  thus  mightily  furthered  the  prin- 
ciple of  democracy  in  the  Church.  ,  Above  all,  he  secured 
an  adequate  participation  of  the  laity  in  the  government 
and  discipline  of  the  Church,  and  thus  gave  free  play  to 
that  representative  principle  that  has  made  Calvinism 
the  mother  of  political  liberties  in  most  of  those  lands 
of  the  western  world  which  enjoy  these  blessings.  Ban- 
croft has  well  said,  ^'The  fanatic  for  Calvinism  was  a 
fanatic  for  liberty,  for  in  the  moral  warfare  for  free- 
dom, his  creed  was  a  part  of  his  army,  and  his  most 
faithful  ally  in  battle." 

It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  in  three  of  the  most 
notable  revolutions  of  the  modern  period  it  has  been 
Protestantism,  and  especially  the  Eeformed  section  of 
it,  that  has  brought  liberty  to  honor.  There  was  first 
of  all  the  memorable  throwing  off  of  the  Spanish  des- 
potism by  the  Netherlands,  with  the  heroic  defense  of 
Leyden  as  the  turning  point  in  the  conflict.  Would  you 
know  the  secret  of  this  marvelous  endurance  crowned 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  95 

with  final  victory  ?  Yoii  may  find  it  in  that  Calvinistic 
doctrine  of  predestination  and  the  perseverance  of  the 
saints^  which,  it  has  been  said,  "lifted  the  individual 
above  pope  and  prelate,  and  priest  and  presbyter  above 
Catholic  Church  and  National  Church,  and  General 
Synod  above  indulgences,  remissions,  and  absolutions 
from  fellow  mortals,  and  brought  him  into  immediate 
dependence  upon  God."  Then  came  the  "Glorious  Eevo- 
lution"  of  1G88  in  England,  when  the  Stuart  despotism 
was  finally  supplanted  by  more  liberal  constitutional 
government  in  the  land  which  had  already  become  the 
mother  of  parliaments,  and  which,  in  the  Westminster 
Confession,  had  given  classic  expression  to  the  secret 
of  its  greater  freedom:  "God  alone  is  lord  of  the 
conscience,  and  hath  left  it  free  from  the  doctrines  and 
commandments  of  men  which  are  in  any  thing  con- 
trary to  his  Word,  or  beside  it,  in  matters  of  faith  or 
worship."  And  what  shall  we  say  of  our  own  Eevolu- 
tion  ?  De  Tocqueville  gives  us  a  suitable  answer :  "The 
greatest  part  of  British  America  was  peopled  by  men 
who  after  having  shaken  off  the  authority  of  the  pope, 
acknowledged  no  other  religious  supremacy.  They 
brought  with  them  into  the  new  world  a  form  of  Chris- 
tianity which  I  cannot  better  describe  than  by  styling 
it  a  democratic  and  republican  religion."  The  roll  of 
honor  in  the  great  struggle  includes  especially  Congre- 
gationalists,  Presbyterians,  Eeformed  Lutherans,  and 
Baptists:  the  Puritans  in  New  England;  more  numer- 
ous, tlie  Scotch-Irish  in  the  middle  colonies;  the  vai'ious 
Dutch,    German,    and    French    constituencies,    notably 


96  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

those  of  Calvinistic  antecedents,  scattered  along  the  sea- 
board. Certainly  we  of  the  Presbyterian  name  may 
take  just  pride  in  the  testimony  given  by  Mr.  Inglis, 
the  Tory  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York:  "I  do 
not  know  one  Presbyterian  minister,  nor  have  I  been 
able,  after  strict  inquiry,  to  hear  of  any,  who  did  not,  by 
preaching  and  every  effort  in  their  power,  promote  all 
the  measures  of  the  Continental  Congress,  however  ex- 
travagant." The  rector,  indeed,  is  not  quite  accurate. 
For  it  appears  that  there  were  two  Presbyterian  min- 
isters in  the  Synod  of  N"ew  England  who  were  charged 
with  being  Tories.  But  if  the  whole  truth  is  to  be  told, 
we  must  add  that  of  these  two  clergymen  one  was  sus- 
pended and  the  other  was  deposed. 

To-day  the  fate  of  democracy  throughout  the  world 
seems  to  be  trembling  in  the  balance.  We  who  are  the 
heirs  of  the  Eeformed  faith  and  its  political  traditions 
cannot  but  believe  that  whatever  territorial  adjustments 
may  have  to  be  made  at  the  close  of  this  world  war,  the 
principles  that  throughout  their  history  have  fostered 
government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the 
people,  will  have  a  still  nobler  part  to  play  in  the  future 
than  they  have  played  in  the  past. 

The  traveler  in  the  valley  of  the  Chamonix  is  im- 
pressed with  the  fertility  of  the  whole  region.  He  does 
not  know  the  secret  of  this  rich  verdure,  until  he  learns 
about  the  many  streams  that  flow  down  Mount  Blanc, 
rising  with  its  snow-capped  peak  fifteen  thousand  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  sea.  As  we  look  abroad  over  the 
world  to-da}^  we  see  here  and  there — alas!  not  every- 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  97 

where — some  nations  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  rich  measure 
of  civil  and  political  liberty.  We  may  not  understand 
the  reason  for  the  differences,  till  we  discover  in  what 
relation  the  peoples  stand  to  those  majestic  mountain 
heights  of  revealed  truth  from  which,  as  from  the  very 
throne  of  God,  has  flowed  a  river  of  water  of  life,  bear- 
ing its  largesses  of  blessing  to  the  valleys.  The  right 
use  of  full  evangelical  freedom  must  needs  lead  to  the 
possession  and  enjoyment  of  complete  civil  and  political 
liberty. 

Let  us  briefly  consider,  in  the  third  place,  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Eeformation  on  the  intellectual  life  of  the 
world. 

Here  again  the  Eeformation  marks  a  new  epoch,  the 
beginning  of  what  with  good  reason  we  call  ^^the  modern 
period."  We  do  not  forget  in  this  connection  the  services 
rendered  in  their  day  by  the  famous  medieval  schools 
that  flourished  here  and  there  under  the  fostering  care 
of  some  worthy  emperor,  bishop,  or  abbot.  Xor  may  we 
fail  to  mention  the  great  debt  the  Eeformers  themselves 
owed  to  the  universities  in  which  they  were  privileged, 
almost  without  exception,  to  imbibe  the  spirit  of  the  new 
learning  that  had  already  begun  to  undermine  the  tra- 
ditional curriculum  and  give  the  student  a  fresh  in- 
terest in,  and  appreciation  of,  the  ancient  classics,  the 
world  of  nature,  and  the  present  life.  But  after  all, 
the  vigor,  the  boldness,  the  critical  acumen,  and  the 
ethical  earnestness  of  the  new  intellectual  life  of  Europe 
was  due  primarily  to  the  fact  that  the  leading  Eeform- 
ers, not  content  with  the  purely  humanistic  studies,  put 


98  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

themselves  under  the  influence  of  that  truth  which  not 
only  makes  the  mind  free  hut  also  stimulates  it  to  the 
highest  development,  the  truth  that  makes  all  things 
new  to  him  who  receives  it. 

As  never  before  in  the  history  of  the  w^orld,  the  Bible 
became  the  Book  of  books.  It  was  quickly  translated  into 
many  of  the  languages  of  Europe.  A  single  puljlisher  at 
Wittenberg  printed  and  sold  within  forty  years  about 
one  hundred  copies  of  Luther's  version.  A  champion 
of  Eoman  Catholicism  complained  that  this  German 
"New  Testament  was  so  much  multiplied  and  spread  by 
printing  that  even  tailors  and  shoemakers,  yea,  even 
women  and  ignorant  persons  who  had  accepted  this  new 
Lutheran  gospel,  and  could  read  a  little  German,  studied 
it  with  the  greatest  avidity  as  the  fountain  of  all  truth." 
And  of  our  own  equally  famous  King  James'  Bible 
Taine  has  declared,  "JSTever  has  a  people  been  so  deeply 
imbued  by  a  foreign  book,  or  let  it  penetrate  so  far 
into  its  manners  and  writings,  its  imagination,  and  its 
language." 

The  pulpit,  meeting  the  greatly  extended  needs  of 
the  people,  returned  again  to  the  best  traditions  in  its 
history  and  Colet  in  London,  Luther  in  Wittenl)erg, 
Zwingli  in  Zurich,  Calvin  in  Geneva,  (Ecolampadius  in 
Basel,  used  the  expository  method  of  preaching  the  gos- 
pel. The  ministry  magnified  its  teaching  function,  and 
the  educational  value  of  its  work  was  incalcuhible. 
Especially  was  this  the  case  in  the  later  stages  of  the 
Eeformation,  when  each  denomination — often,  no  doubt, 
with  more  zeal  than  wisdom  and  charity — gave  special 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  99 

attention  to  the  peculiarities  of  its  highly  articulated 
confession  of  faith. 

Then,  too,  the  minute  study  of  the  Scriptures  and  the 
controversial  necessities  of  the  day  brought  forth  several 
new  sciences — Biblical  geography,  archaeology,  and 
chronology — together  with  the  much  abused  but  quite 
indispensable  discipline  of  textual  and  historical  criti- 
cism, without  which,  indeed,  Protestantism  could  not 
have  come  to  the  birth,  and  without  which  it  cannot 
live. 

Presently  the  circle  of  intellectual  interests  expanded 
to  embrace  the  whole  realm  of  the  natural  sciences.  In 
the  free  and  stimulating  atmosphere  of  Protestantism 
men  sought  afresh  to  master  the  secrets  of  nature  by 
learning  how  to  obey  her  laws.  The  inductive  method 
of  investigation  was  popularized,  and,  literally,  a  new 
world  was  opened  to  view.  Necessity  became  the  mother 
of  invention.  In  Holland,  we  hear  for  the  first  time 
of  the  thermometer,  tlie  telescope,  and  the  microscope; 
in  Ital}^,  of  Torricelli's  barometer;  in  Germany,  of 
Guericke's  air  pump.  In  Scotland,  Napier  applied 
logarithms  to  shorten  mathematical  operations ;  in  Eng- 
land, Harvey  demonstrated  the  circulation  of  the  blood 
and  N"ewton  deduced  the  laws  of  gravitation.  Eomer 
measured  the  velocity  of  light;  Kepler  formulated  the 
laws  of  the  planetary  motions;  Horrocks  for  the  first 
time  observed  the  transit  of  Venus  and  Halley  foretold 
the  return  of  a  comet.  In  the  realm  of  theoretical  specu- 
lation Descartes,  trained  in  a  Jesuit  college,  but  dis- 
satisfied with  the  results,  of  scholasticism,  inaugurated. 


100  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

in  the  more  congenial  atmospliere  of  Protestant  Hol- 
land, a  new  method  of  philosophic  inquiry  and  earned 
for  himself  the  title,  "the  father  of  modern  philosophy." 
No  doubt  the  Church  in  all  her  branches  has  much  to 
be  ashamed  of  and  sorry  for  both  before  and  since  the 
Eeformation,  in  her  attitude  toward  men  of  science  as 
well  as  toward  many  vain  pretenders  to  knowledge. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  scientists  of  every  name  ought 
never  to  forget  that  among  the  forces  that  have  con- 
tributed to  their  freedom  in  investigation  the  Eeforma- 
tion  was  one  of  the  most  important. 

The  whole  history  of  modern  education  emphasizes 
the  contribution  of  Protestantism  to  our  intellectual  life. 
Nothing  was  more  characteristic  of  the  outward  mani- 
festations of  the  awakening  of  the  sixteenth  century 
than  its  devotion  to  the  cause  of  learning.  Melanch- 
thon  well  deserved  his  title,  Praeceptor  Germaniae.  At 
Zurich,  Zwingli  organized  the  Carolinum,  the  predeces- 
sor of  the  modern  university  of  that  city.  Calvin,  an- 
other born  teacher,  founded  the  celebrated  Academy  of 
Geneva.  Knox,  in  the  "First  Book  of  Discipline,''  gave 
directions  for  the  instruction  of  the  youth  in  liberal 
learning  as  well  as  in  distinctively  religious  studies.  In 
our  own  land  the  true  genius  of  the  Protestant  Churches 
has  ever  been  manifested  in  their  policy  of  building  and 
endowing  not  cathedrals  but  colleges,  and  to  this  day 
these  oldest  daughters  of  the  Church  are  keeping  them- 
selves well  in  the  van  of  intellectual  progress.  But  in 
this  connection  the  greatest  honor  is  due  the  Eeformers, 
in  that  by  their  labors  they  made  necessary  and  possible 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  101 

a  system  of  general  or  popular  education,  a  system 
which,  with  reference  to  its  influence  in  our  own  coun- 
try, a  distinguished  authority  has  called  "the  most  im- 
portant and  creative  of  our  distinctly  American  ideas." 
Bancroft  has  called  Calvin  its  founder;  doubtless,  it 
would  be  more  accurate  to  call  him  its  grandfather; 
for  the  system  came  to  us  indirectly  from  Geneva  by 
way  of  Scotland  and  Holland.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
if  we  wish  to  understand  either  the  worth  or  the  per- 
petuity of  the  best  elements  of  our  American  civilization 
we  must  ever  gratefully  remember  that  the  men  who 
laid  the  foundations  of  our  institutions  were  reared  in 
the  noblest  traditions  of  the  Eeformation  concerning 
a  well-educated  ministry  and  an  intelligent,  self-reliant 
citizenry. 

Lastly  let  us  look  at  the  influence  of  the  Eeforma- 
tion on  our  moral  life. 

History  knows  nothing  of  any  advancements  in  morals 
apart  from  new  religious  inspirations  and  sanctions. 
Likewise  true  Christian  morality  is  but  the  efflorescence 
and  fruitage  of  the  root  principles  of  our  evangelical 
religion.  We  should  naturally  expect,  therefore,  that 
a  deeply  spiritual  movement,  such  as  the  Eeformation, 
would  produce  its  own  characteristic  type  of  piety. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  Protestantism  has  created  and  main- 
tained the  highest  ideal  of  moral  excellence  known  to 
us,  an  ideal  that  reveals  its  superiority  the  moment  it  is 
brought  into  comparison  with  some  of  our  other  his- 
toric ideals. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  typical  worthy  of  the  Greco- 


102  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

Eoman  worlds  whom  Aristotle  has  portrayed  for  ns  in 
his  picture  of  the  "magnanimous"  or  "great-souled" 
man.  He  had,  no  doubt,  his  admirable  traits ;  he  had  a 
sense  of  honor,  cherished  noble  ambitions  for  his  own 
development,  and  if  need  was,  could  endure  hardness 
with  Stoic  fortitude.  But  he  was  proud,  self-satisfied, 
absorbed  in  his  own  interests,  capable  of  looking  with 
lofty  disdain  upon  those  less  fortunate  than  himself, 
utterly  destitute  of  such  virtues  as  humility,  forbear- 
ance, sympathy,  and  charity.  It  is  an  outworn  ideal. 
Protestantism  can  never  be  satisfied  with  it. 

Then  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  Latin  and  the  Greek 
Churches  popularized  the  ascetic  ideal.  The  monk  was 
the  true  saint.  Flight  from  the  world  was  the  highest 
inoral  achievement.  This  conception,  too,  still  has 
charms  for  many  a  contemplative  soul,  and  as  we  see 
the  ideal  embodied  in  such  lives  as  those  of  Anselm  of 
Canterbur}^,  Francis  of  Assisi,  or  Bernard  of  Clairvaux, 
or  in  so  widely  read  and  helpful  a  book  of  devotion  as 
"The  Imitation  of  Christ,"  by  Thomas  a  Kempis,  we 
cannot  but  admire  the  intense  longing  for  holiness,  the 
passionate  self-abnegation,  the  eager  devotion  to  the 
unseen  and  eternal.  But  taken  as  a  whole  the  ascetic 
life  is  too  narrow  to  be  a  true  reflection  of  the  mind  of 
Christ,  and  we  cannot  but  praise  the  Eeformers  for 
emancipating  their  followers  from  the  fetters  of  monas- 
tic vows.  The  hermit  of  the  desert  and  the  begging 
friar  represent  an  outworn  ideal  of  manhood. 

N'or  does  the  merely  utilitarian  ethic  of  many  a 
modern   j^ri^idential   philosopher   satisfy  us.     Some   of 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  103 


Benjamin  Franklin's  maxims,  for  instance,  ^^A  stitch  in 
time  saves  nine/'  or  "A  bird  in  the  hand  is  worth  two  in 
the  bush/'  are  useful  enough  as  hints  for  the  young 
reader;  but  no  Protestant  can  accept  them  as  an  ade- 
quate interpretation  of  duty;  they  lack  spiritual  vision 
and  power. 

Over  against  all  such  fragmentary  and  imperfect 
ideals  the  Eeformers  have  taught  us  to  put  the  New 
Testament  teachings  concerning  sainthood  and  service. 
As  early  as  1520  Luther  showed  that  the  holy  man  is 
not  the  recluse  in  the  monastery,  but  he  who,  accepting 
his  providentally  given  place  and  task  and  relationships, 
does  the  divine  will  with  the  sincere  desire  of  glorifying 
God.  The  disposition,  the  motive  in  the  innermost  re- 
cesses of  the  heart,  life's  aim  and  purpose — these,  not 
outward  circumstances  and  conditions,  determine  moral 
values.  Our  commonest  toil,  our  humblest  service,  may 
be  transfigured  and  transformed  by  the  spirit  of  true 
worship.  Doubtless,  some  of  the  social  aspects  of  the 
Christian  ideal  have  had  to  wait  for  our  own  day  for  a 
more  adequate  recognition,  but  the  influence  of  the 
Eeformation,  upon  ethical  theory  and  practice  alike,  has 
been  profound  and  pervasive. 

Especially  is  this  the  case  within  the  Eeformed 
Churches,  which  from  the  first  were  marked  by  a  higher 
appreciation  of  the  moral  necessities  of  the  age  and  by 
greater  attention  to  the  matter  of  Church  discipline.  To 
be  sure,  there  was  often  an  undue  interference  with 
the  rights  of  conscience,  and  there  is  some  basis  for  the 
charge  that  Puritanism,  at  least,  cared  little  for  the 


104  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

aesthetic  values  of  life.  But  the  critic  of  the  Calvinistic 
ethic  and  of  the  Eeformed  tj^pe  of  piety  has  still  to  wait 
for  a  presentation  of  Christianity  that  can  produce  men 
and  women  of  nobler  conceptions  of  duty  and  higher 
attainments  in  morals.  For  a  generation  whose  sense 
of  the  divine  presence  in  human  life  had  become  dim, 
Immanuel  Kant  did  well  to  make  his  readers  rise  with 
him  from  the  "Thou  shalt"  of  their  own  consciences  to 
the  thought  of  God  as  the  Lawgiver.  But  more  impres- 
sive and  potent  was  the  appeal  of  the  great  Genevan 
who,  beginning  with  the  sovereign  majesty  of  the  thrice- 
holy  God,  and  lifting  all  our  life  to  the  face  of  the 
Eternal,  made  the  revealed  "Thou  shalt"  of  the  divine 
Lawgiver — as  much  an  enabling  act  as  a  command — 
echo  in  the  silent  depths  o£  the  heart  of  the  true  wor- 
shiper. In  his  noble  paraphrase  of  the  gi'eat  word  of  the 
Apostle  Paul,  Wordsworth  has  given  us  the  secret  of 
the  stern  yet  joyous  piety  of  those  who  have  caught  the 
spirit  of  the  leaders  of  the  Eeformation : 

One  edeqiiate  support 
For  the  calamities  of  mortal  life 
Exists — one  only;   an  assured  belief 
That  the  procession  of  our  fate,  howe'er 
Sad  or  disturbed,  is  ordered  by  a  Being 
Of  infinite  benevolence  and  power; 
Whose  everlasting  purposes  embrace 
All  accidents,  converting  them  to  good. 

Upon  us  in  this  distant  land  and  time  the  ends  of 
the  ages  have  come.  In  no  other  country  of  the  world 
do  the  various  streams  of  our  Protestantism  commingle 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  105 

as  they  do  within  our  borders.  Ours  is  the  high  duty, 
the  blessed  privilege,  of  fostering  the  sense  of  historic 
continuity  and  solidarity  by  which  alone  we  can  esti- 
mate at  their  true  value,  and  use  in  their  just  propor- 
tion, the  diverse  elements  that  have  made  our  modern 
world  what  it  is.  And  if  we,  by  reason  of  our  excessive 
denominationalism  and  the  lack  of  efficient  cooperation 
amouo-  the  Churches,  must  bear  the  chief  burden  of  the 
reproach  of  our  Protestantism  as  a  devisive  principle  in 
our  modern  Christianity,  it  behooves  us  to  return  for 
inspiration  and  guidance,  as  did  the  fathers  in  their  day, 
to  that  same  Christ  in  whom  alone  all  contradictions  are 
reconciled.  And  here,  too,  "History  is  the  handmaid 
of  Providence,  the  priestess  of  truth,  the  mother  of 
wisdom."  We  must  get  back  to  that  same  Christ  whom 
the  Eeformers  by  a  fresh  study  of  the  Bible  interpreted 
with  such  power  and  such  beneficent  consequences  to 
their  clay  and  generation.  Through  that  same  Scripture 
we  must  rise  to  a  higher  unity  of  the  faith  that  is  in 
Christ  Jesus. 

The  highest  spot  in  southern  Europe  is  the  place 
where  Switzerland,  Austria,  and  Italy  meet.  At  the 
very  summit,  ten  thousand  feet  above  the  sea,  there  is  a 
plain  granite  shaft.  On  the  plains  below  the  armies  of 
these  nations  have  often  met  in  bloody  battles.  But 
up  yonder,  all  is  peace  and  serenity.  It  is  even  so  with 
our  sadly  distracted  Protestantism.  As  we  contend  in 
the  lowlands  of  our  faith,  we  lose  the  true  perspective 
and  dissipate  much  vital  force  in  aimless  strife.  But 
as  we  ascend   to   the  heights   of   revealed   truth,   and 


106  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

especially  as  we  draw  near  to  Him  who  is  the  Truth 
and  try  to  do  his  manifested  will,  we  enter  into  fellow- 
ship with  all  who  by  faith  and  hope  and  love  commune 
with  him  who  is  our  Peace. 


THE    SEEVICE    IN    THE    FIRST    METHODIST 
CHUECH,  EEV.  H.  C.  BUEGIN,  PASTOE 

The  Moderator  of  the  General  Assembly,  Eev.  J. 
Wilbur  Chapman,  D.D.,  presided. 

The  addresses  were  delivered  by  William  E.  Farmer, 
D.D.,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Literature  and 
Exegesis  in  the  Western  Theological  Seminary,  Pitts- 
burgh, and  William  McKibbin,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President 
of  Lane  Theological  Seminary,  Cincinnati. 


THE  EEFOEMATIOISr  AND  HUMANISM 

BY 
WILLIAM  R.  FARMER,  D.D. 

Our  interest  in  the  Eeformation  is  not  the  detached 
curious  interest  of  the  antiquary,  but  rather  that  of  the 
historian.  There  is  a  more  or  less  clear  consciousness 
of  the  unity  Avhich  underlies  all  the  varied  movements  of 
the  centuries.  We  look  back  over  the  four  hundred 
years  which  have  elapsed  since  Luther  nailed  up  his 
Theses  on  the  Wittenberg  church  door,  and  know  that 
the  spirit  which  then  uttered  itself  in  the  language  of 
the  sixteenth  century  and  under  the  conditions  provided 
by  the  world  of  that  time  was  an  immortal  spirit.  The 
task  to  which  he  and  his  followers  gave  themselves  was 
at  bottom  one  with  the  work  to  which  we  also  are  called, 
and  to-day  we  seek  again  to  define  the  nature  of  that 
task,  not  merely  for  the  sake  of  an  intellectual  interest 
in  what  they  did,  but  rather  because  it  is  only  by  know- 
ing the  meaning  of  their  work  that  we  can  understand 
the  obligation  which  rests  upon  ourselves. 

What  then  was  the  Eeformation?  The  answer  to 
that  question  will  depend  in  some  degree  upon  the 
angle  from  which  it  is  viewed.  To  some  it  has  pre- 
sented itself  chiefly  as  a  great  political  movement,  to 
others  as  in  the  main  a  profound  modification  of  the 
structure  of  society  based  upon  changed  conceptions  of 

109 


110  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

social  and  personal  ethics :  and  still  others  have  con- 
sidered it  as  merely  one  of  the  phases  of  the  Eenaissance, 
having  its  inner  meaning  not  in  itself  but  in  that  larger 
movement  of  which  it  was  a  part.  Doubtless  we  are 
to  recognize  in  each  of  these  conceptions  some  part  of  the 
truth,  but  none  of  them  takes  us  to  the  heart  of  the 
matter.  For  whatever  may  have  been  the  bearing  of 
the  Eeformation  upon  the  political  and  social  structure 
of  Europe,  it  was  in  its  essence  not  a  political,  or  a 
social,  or  even  an  ecclesiastical  movement,  but  a  re- 
ligious movement.  It  consisted  essentially  in  a  rediscov- 
ery of  the  right  relation  of  a  man  to  his  G-od,  and  an 
attempt  to  express  that  fundamental  truth  in  the  terms 
of  theological  formula  and  ecclesiastical  organization. 

Our  concern  at  this  moment  is  with  certain  implica- 
tions of  the  two  main  doctrines  of  the  Eeformation,  the 
doctrine  of  the  supreme  authority  of  the  Scriptures, 
and  the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith.  At  the  heart 
of  these  two  central  articles  of  the  Eeformed  theology 
lies  a  principle  which  is  in  a  sense  more  vital  to  religion 
than  either  of  them,  a  principle  of  which  the  Eeform- 
ers  themselves  were  clearly  aware,  and  it  is  a  striking 
illustration  of  the  irony  of  history  that  we  should  find 
some  difficulty  in  allowing  it  to  have  its  full  constructive 
value  in  the  religious  life  of  our  own  day.  I  refer  to 
the  principle  of  the  validity  of  individual  human  experi- 
ence in  the  apprehension  of  spiritual  truth,  and  propose 
to  consider  two  examples  of  the  operation  of  this  prin- 
ciple in  the  work  of  the  two  chief  leaders  of  the  Ee- 
formation, John  Calvin  and  Martin  Luther.     The  one 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  111 

illustrates  tlie  principle  as  it  was  implied  in  the  attitude 
of  the  Reformers  to  the  Scripture,  and  the  other  exhibits 
it  as  the  very  heart  of  the  doctrine  of  justification  by 
faith. 

The  common  conception  of  John  Calvin  represents 
him  as  primarily  a  theologian,  mainly  concerned  with 
the  systematic  and  logical  statement  of  the  intellectual 
content  of  the  Eeformed  faith.  He  is  thought  of  as  a 
splendid,  or  terrible,  example  of  the  pontifical  rigidities 
of  the  theological  mind,  if  we  may  so  adapt  a  fine  phrase 
of  John  Euskin.  He  was  the  father  of  Calvinism,  the 
supreme  achievement  of  logic  relentlessly  applied  to  the 
elusive  realities  of  the  spiritual  life.  But,  in  fact,  John 
Calvin  was  not  at  heart  either  a  theologian  or  an 
ecclesiastical  statesman,  but  a  man  of  letters,  and  it  is 
only  as  we  recognize  this  element  in  his  character  that 
we  can  rightly  appreciate  one  of  the  most  important 
contributions  wdiich  he  made  to  the  Eeformation. 

Calvin's  work  falls  into  three  main  divisions.  As  a 
theologian,  he  formulated,  in  "Institutes  of  the  Chris- 
tian Eeligion,"  the  system  of  doctrine  which  bears  his 
name;  as  a  statesman,  he  organized  the  political  and 
social  structure  of  the  city  of  Geneva ;  and  as  an  in- 
terpreter of  Scripture,  he  wrote  a  series  of  commentaries 
covering  the  greater  part  of  the  Old  and  N"ew  Testa- 
ments, in  which  he  applied  for  the  first  time  the  sound 
principles  of  interpretation  upon  which  the  best  modern 
exegesis  is  based.  Of  these  three  departments  of  his 
great  work  as  a  reformer  it  was  the  last  in  which  he 
found  himself  most  at  home,  and  here  chiefly  he  illus- 


112  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

trates  the  principle  which  has  ah'eady  been  indicated  as 
the  vital  principle  of  the  Eeformation,  the  principle  of 
the  validity  of  hnman  experience,  as  over  against  insti- 
tutional authorit}^,  in  the  apprehension  of  spiritual 
truth. 

In  order  to  appreciate  rightly  the  significance  of  Cal- 
vin's work  as  an  interpreter,  we  must  consider  his  rela- 
tion to  the  intellectual  world  in  which  he  lived,  the 
world  of  the  Eenaissance.  Greek  scholars,  driven  out 
of  Constantinople  by  the  Mohammedans  in  1453,  had 
found  refuge  in  the  cities  of  Italy,  carrying  with  them 
their  household  gods — the  Greek  language,  Greek  liter- 
ature, Greek  culture  in  general.  Under  their  influence 
the  study  of  the  classics  became  the  intellectual  fashion 
of  the  day.  The  barren  exercises  of  abstract  logic  which 
formed  the  content  of  scholasticism  gave  place  to  a  new 
interest  in  the  treasures  of  the  past.  From  the  great 
universities  all  over  Europe  men  flocked  to  northern 
Italy,  to  learn  Greek,  to  live  for  a  while  in  the  vital  air 
of  the  new  day,  and  to  carry  back  to  France,  Germany, 
England,  something  of  the  spirit  of  the  New  Learning. 
It  was  more  than  a  new  learning;  it  was  a  new  concep- 
tion of  life,  a  new  point  of  view,  a  new  standard  of 
value.  The  novelty  of  it  lay  in  the  tremendous  empha- 
sis it  laid  upon  humanity.  The  Greek  classics  are  the 
records  of  human  experience,  and  it  is  the  truth  and 
significance  of  their  content,  even  more  than  the  perfec- 
tion of  their  form,  which  have  made  them  immortal.  It 
was  natural  that  the  Ncav  Learning,  as  it  spread  through 
France  and  Germany,  should  be  named  ^'Humanism,'' 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION    ■  113 

and  that  the  men  who  devoted  themselves  to  it^  held  its 
point  of  view,  accepted  its  estimates  of  value  and  its 
interpretation  of  life,  were  known  as  "Humanists."  And 
the  heart  of  Humanism  is  the  recognition  of  the  value 
of  human  experience  as  a  guide  in  the  search  for  truth 
because  it  is  the  one  immediate  reality  with  which  the 
mind  is  confronted  as  it  enters  upon  that  quest. 

Now  Calvin  was  a  Humanist  before  he  was  a  Ee- 
former.  In  his  youth  he  "went  beyond  those  of  his  own 
age,"  in  the  new  scholarship  of  Humanism,  and  the  first 
book  which  he  published  was  a  learned  commentary 
on  the  De  dementia  of  Seneca.  It  was  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  Humanist  that  he  interpreted  the  Scrip- 
tures. In  the  introduction  of  his  commentary  on  The 
Psalms  he  says  that  he  considers  himself  especially  com- 
petent to  interpret  this  part  of  Scripture  because  his 
experience  has  been  in  many  respects  similar  to  that  of 
David.  The  significance  of  this  statement  lies  in  its 
implication  that  The  Psalms  are  first  of  all  records  of 
human  experience,  and  that  their  divine  authority  is 
mediated  through  their  human  reality.  The  same  con- 
ception underlies  all  his  exegetical  work,  and  exercises 
a  determining  influence  on  its  principles  and  methods. 

Thus  we  see  that  in  John  Calvin  Humanism  became 
a  potent  factor  in  the  Eeformation,  and  perhaps  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  we  are  to  find  here  the  source  of 
that  statement  in  the  Westminster  Confession  which 
makes  personal  experience,  and  not  ecclesiastical  author- 
ity, the  ground  of  our  acceptance  of  the  Scriptures  as 
divine  and  authoritative. 


414  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

So  miicli  for  the  principle  of  the  validity  of  personal 
experience  as  an  element  in  the  attitude  of  the  Eeform- 
ers  toward  the  Scripture.  Let  us  now  consider  the 
operation  of  the  same  jjrinciple  in  the  other  cardinal 
doctrine  of  the  Eeformation,  justification  by  faith,  as 
set  forth  by  its  chief  apostle,  Martin  Luther. 

Luther  was  not  a  Humanist  in  the  same  sense  in 
which  we  apply  that  term  to  Calvin,  although  he  was 
more  or  less  influenced  by  that  movement  as  were  all 
thinking  men  of  his  time.  He  remained,  to  a  greater 
degree  than  almost  any  other  of  the  Eeformers,  under 
the  influence  of  the  older  modes  of  thought.  But  in 
.another  and  perhaps  even  a  deeper  sense  he  was  a 
Humanist  nevertheless,  in  that  the  cardinal  principles 
of  Humanism,  the  authority  of  personal  experience,  was 
for  him  also  supreme.  We  may  say  that  whereas  Calvin 
became  a  Humanist,  Luther  was  a  Humanist  from  his 
birth,  being  endowed  by  nature  with  a  spirit  so  vigor- 
ous and  ardent  that  all  his  deeper  experience  had  a 
vividness  which  guaranteed  for  him  its  reality  and  made 
it  the  guiding  and  controlling  influence  of  his  life.  His 
1^  religion  was  not  a  religion  of  authority  but  a  religion 
of  experience.  For  its  great  central  truth,  the  justifica- 
tion of  the  individual  by  faith  in  Jesus  Christ,  was  an 
experience  before  it  was  a  doctrine,  and  its  truth  as  a 
doctrine  was  based  upon  its  reality  as  a  personal  experi- 
ence. It  was  this  confidence  in  his  own  experience  as 
a  guide,  this  steadfast  obedience  to  his  own  heavenly 
vision,  which  made  him  strong  to  stand  alone  before  the 
combined   power   of   the   empire   and   the   papacy   and 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  115 

solemnly  declare  that  he  could  do  no  otherwise.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  had 
such  a  fascination  for  Luther.  Certainly  none  could 
appreciate  better  than  he  the  spirit  and  the  significance 
of  a  document  in  which  Paul  affirms  the  validity  of  his 
own  experience,  bases  upon  it  all  his  theology  so  that 
his  theology  is  indeed  but  the  interpretation  of  it,  and 
his  apostleship  his  response  to  its  imperative  command. 

It  seems  to  be  clear,  then,  that  Protestantism  is,  in  its  ^ 
oivigin  and  in  its  essence,  a  ^^religion  of  experience." 
Through  Calvin  and  Luther,  and  in  different  forms  and 
varying  degree  through  Erasmus  "the  Prince  of  Human- 
ists," Melanchthon,  John  Colet,  and  many  others,  who 
were  influenced  by  Humanism,  the  cardinal  principle  of 
that  movement  became  a  cardinal  principle  of  the  Ee- 
formation  also,  so  that  we  may  almost  say  that  Pro-  ^ 
testant  Christianity  is  Humanism  raised  to  its  highest 
power,  Humanism  with  its  face  toward  God.  And  as 
we  are  celebrating  in  this  year  of  our  Lord  nineteen 
hundred  and  seventeen  the  four  hundredth  anniversary 
of  the  birth  of  Protestantism,  we  should  celebrate  it  not 
merely  by  a  historical  retrospect  and  retelling  of  the 
things  that  happened  then,  but  by  a  reaffirmation  of 
the  great  principle  which  constituted  the  inner  spirit 
of  those  events,  a  renewal  of  our  allegiance  to  that  prin- 
ciple as  it  operates  in  the  individual  and  in  the  race, 
and  a  deepening  and  strengthening  of  our  faith  that 
in  the  tremendous  experience  of  this  hour  we  shall  some- 
how come  upon  a  new  revelation,  a  clearer  and  truer 
vision  of  the  face  of  God. 


THE  REFOEMATION  AND  SOME  VITAL  x\ND 

CONSTEUCTIVE  ELEMENTS  OF 

MODERN  LIFE 

BY 

WILLIAM   McKIBBIN,    D.D.,    LL.D. 

The  Eeformation  was  a  tremendous  disclosure  of 
power:  intellectual,  spiritual,  and  organific.  It  was 
destructive  and  constructive,  tearing  down  and  build- 
ing up.  No  realm  of  human  thought  or  action  escaped 
its  influence. 

It  found  almost  all  Europe  in  the  grasp  of  a  power- 
ful ecclesiastical  despotism,  styling  itself  the  Church 
of  Christ,  the  only  divinely  appointed  channel  of  sal- 
vation. Its  head  was  the  bishop  of  Rome,  ex  officio,  held 
to  be  the  vicar  of  Christ  on  earth.  It  had  formulated 
a  vast  body  of  teachings  covering  every  institution, 
every  relationship  of  human  life,  and  every  function 
of  the  human  spirit.  At  the  heart  of  this  great  body 
of  doctrine  were  the  great  essential  and  saving  truths 
which  had  constituted  the  historic  faith  of  the  Church 
from  the  beginning,  but  these  basal  beliefs  were  over- 
laid and  superseded  by  traditions  and  rites  of  human 
origin,  which  precluded  the  mass  of  the  people,  and  a 
large  proportion  of  the  clergy,  from  any  intelligent 
apprehension  of  their  meaning  or  radical  experience  of 
their  power  in  character  and  conduct. 

117 


118  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

While  basing  its  autliorit}^  upon  tlie  Scriptures,  it 
silenced  all  appeal  to  them  h}^  asserting  itself  to  be  the 
only  infallible  interpreter  of  their  meaning.  Arming 
itself  with  the  power  of  the  State,  it  relentless^  pursued 
with  fire  and  sword,  as  well  as  with  every  spiritual 
anathema,  any  and  all  who  dared  to  question  its  author- 
ity or  challenge  its  teachings.  Abounding  in  wealth, 
and  possessing  far-reaching  political  power,  even  to  the 
absolution  of  subjects  from  their  oaths  of  allegiance  to 
their  sovereigns,  it  exercised  an  influence  over  men  in 
which  an  appeal  was  made  to  them  by  all  the  rewards 
and  penalties  of  time  and  eternity.  Leader  after  leader 
arose  within  its  bounds,  endued  with  the  Spirit  of  God, 
protesting,  in  the  name  of  reason  and  conscience  and 
Scripture,  against  its  corruptions  in  doctrine  and  life, 
and  calling  the  Church  back  to  the  simplicity  of  apos- 
tolic teaching  and  the  purity  of  apostolic  ethics,  only, 
after  a  brief  period  of  popularity,  to  be  terrified  into 
recantation,  consigned  to  the  dungeon,  the  stake,  or  the 
scaffold,  or  driven  into  exile. 

Liberty  for  men's  souls  and  bodies  seemed  hopeless 
under  its  iron  rule.  In  1453  Constantinople  fell  before 
the  Turkish  power,  a  disaster  to  Christendom  seemingly 
irreparable,  but  destined  to  purify  its  faith  and  life,  and 
to  open  up  the  way  for  great  communions  to  come  into 
existence,  which  should  hold  the  ^ew  Testament  teach- 
ing and  should  enter  upon  a  world-wide  movement  to 
carry  the  gospel,  in  its  simplicity,  to  the  nations. 

Plonks  and  scholars,  flying  westward  from  the  rule 
of  the  conquerors,  carried  with  them  the  manuscripts  of 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  119 

the  Greek  classics,  and  a  complete  literary  apparatus 
for  the  study  of  the  Greek  language.  In  so  doing  they 
initiated  in  the  western  world  a  mighty  intellectual 
movement,  aptly  termed  the  Eevival  of  Learning,  which 
has  continued  with  ever-increasing  force,  and  ever- 
widening  sweep,  nntil  the  present  hour.  It  opened  to 
the  scholars  of  the  west  not  only  the  treasures  of  Greek 
literature  hut  also  the  veritahle  text  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment in  the  original  Greek.  Thus  papal  and  apostolic 
Christianity  were  brought  face  to  face,  and  the 
startling  contrast  was  revealed  to  the  world.  The  issue 
between  New  Testament  teaching  and  the  traditions  of 
men  was  sharply  defined,  and  a  contest  which  was  radical 
and  uncompromising  was  precipitated. 

The  breaking  out  of  hostilities  in  different  places  was 
due  to  different  occasions,  but  the  fundamental  question 
upon  which  they  all  turned  was  the  seat  of  authority  in 
religion.  As  the  debates  proceeded  it  became  more  and 
more  manifest  to  Protestant  Christendom  that  the  ax  i^ 
to  be  laid  at  the  root  of  every  error  in  doctrine  and 
morals  and  every  ecclesiastical  abuse,  was  the  self- 
evidencing  and  self-interpreting  Scripture  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments,  the  fully  inspired  Word  of  God, 
the  only  infallible  rule  of  faith  and  practice. 

The  clear  perception  and  bold  affirmation  of  this 
great  truth  unified  the  Eeformation,  crystallizing  Prot- 
estantism into  a  positive,  coherent,  and  aggressive  force, 
and  arming  it  with  a  courage  and  method  by  which  all 
Pome's  errors  might  be  exposed,  and  the  will  of  God 
applied  to  all  human  conduct,  religious  or  secular. 


120  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

This  great  principle  lies  at  the  foundation  of  the 
^  modern  period,  for  the  modern  period  is  the  child  of 
the  Eeformation.  It  is  central  to  all  the  creeds  of  the 
Eeformation,  and  constitutes  a  vital  element  in  the 
faith  of  all  the  Churches  that  are  to-day  living  and 
regnant  forces  in  the  maintenance  of  the  principles  of 
civil  and  religious  liberty,  which  have  reached  their 
highest  expression  in  the  United  States  of  America. 

To  this  bar  Churches  and  States,  the  learned  and 
unlearned,  all  doctrines  of  men  were  summoned;  as 
their  findings  harmonized  with  or  diverged  from  its 
teachings  they  stood  or  fell.  To  use  the  language  of 
the  Westminster  Confession :  ^^The  Supreme  Judge,  by 
whom  all  controversies  of  religion  are  to  be  determined, 
and  all  decrees  of  councils,  opinions  of  ancient  writers, 
doctrines  of  men,  and  private  spirits,  are  to  be  exam- 
ined, and  in  whose  sentence  we  are  to  rest,  can  be  no 
other  but  the  Holy  Spirit  speaking  in  the  Scripture." 

Rationalism,  with  its  denial  of  the  supernatural,  and 
ecclesiasticism,  with  its  denial  to  believers  of  direct 
access  to  Scripture  and  to  God,  have  failed  through  all 
history  to  develop  that  form  of  modern  life  which  has 
found  expression  in  the  freedom-loving  peoples  of  the 
world.  Modern  life  cannot  stand  upon  any  other  founda- 
tion than  that  which  has  been  laid:  the  motive  and 
structural  forces  which  have  built  up  its  most  humane 
and  prosperous  forms  cannot  be  discarded  without  the 
destruction  of  the  fabrics  which  they  erected.  The 
assaults  of  modern  destructive  criticism  have  only  dem- 
onstrated the  impregnability  of  this  great  Eock  upon 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  121 

which  civilization  rests,  and  the  inexhaustibility  and 
transforming  power  of  the  streams  which  pour  forth 
from  this  divinely  opened  fountain.  Religion-,  true 
or  false,  has  been  the  gi-eatest  of  all  social  and  political 
forces,  and  the  religion  of  the  Scriptures,  incarnate  in 
Jesus  Christ,  has  been  the  source  of  the  highest  and 
best  which  has  yet  appeared  in  individual  and  associated 
life,  and  has  fallen  short  only  at  the  point  at  which  men 
have  abandoned  or  corrupted  its  teachings. 

The  great  creeds  of  the  Eeformation,  of  which  the 
Westminster  Confession  of  Faith  is  the  ripest,  the  most 
comprehensive,  and  the  most  systematic,  arose  in  the 
effort  to  contravene,  correct,  or  purify  Eoman  Catholic 
teaching,  which  covered  the  whole  realm  of  faith  and 
conduct,  by  the  test  of  Holy  Scripture,  and  were  inevi- 
table and  indispensable  methods  of  safeguarding  the 
Eeformation  itself.  The  current  and  popular  criticisms 
of  these  great  documents,  especially  the  Westminster 
Confession,  as  the  product  of  a  love  for  intellectual 
subtleties,  and  an  emphasis  upon  trifling  points  of  a  faith 
that  had  lost  its  vitalizing  power,  are  due  to  a  super- 
ficial insight,  which  is  blind  to  the  strength  of  the 
convictions  which  they  embodied,  and  the  deadly  environ- 
ment or  "psychological  climate"  in  which  they  were 
wrought  out.  As  Professor  Fisher  says  of  the  evolution 
of  theological  definiteness :  "Theology  arose  in  the 
Church  as  a  means  of  self-defense.  In  resisting  assail- 
ants, lines  of  circumvallation  are  required.  These  must 
be  related  to  the  positions  taken  by  the  attacking  force.'' 

The  Eeformation  set  a  value  upon  the  individual  man 


122  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

which  has  ceaselessly  worked,  and  is  still  working,  to- 
ward the  overthrow  of  every  despotism,  political,  social, 
economic,  or  religious,  which  has  marred  the  souls  and 
bodies  of  men,  and  for  the  great  uplifts  toward  better 
intellectual,  moral,  and  physical  conditions  among  all 
classes,  of  which  our  own  country  is  a  conspicuous  ex- 
ample. 

The  death  on  the  cross  of  the  eternal  Son  of  God  for 
every  man,  of  which  the  Scriptures,  especially  of  the 
New  Testament,  are  so  full,  set  a  value  upon  the  indi- 
vidual man  above  all  price,  and  forever  forbade  that  his 
well-being,  especially  in  the  moral,  affectional,  and 
spiritual  realms,  should  be  sacrificed  to  any  efficiency, 
industrial  or  otherwise,  wdiich  deals  with  the  material 
development  of  society.  The  placing  of  the  Bible  in 
the  hands  of  the  people,  and  making  it  the  daily  study 
of  the  home,  operated  with  tremendous  power  to  arouse 
and  maintain  the  sacredness  of  every  human  person- 
ality. 

What  Eichard  Henry  Green,  the  English  historian, 
says  of  Calvinism,  may  be  said  of  the  Eeformation,  of 
which  it  was  along  certain  lines  the  most  highly  devel- 
oped type:  "It  is  in  Calvinism  that  the  modern  world 
strikes  its  roots,  for  it  was  Calvinism  that  first  revealed 
the  worth  and  dignity  of  man.  Called  of  God,  and  heir 
of  heaven,  the  trader  at  his  counter  and  the  disrofer  in 
his  field  suddenly  rose  into  equality  with  the  noble  and 
the  king." 

Nothing  can  sustain  the  institutions  and  ideals  based 
upon  the  intrinsic  pricelessness  of  a  human  personality 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  123 

but  the  great  convictions  out  of  which  they  sprang  and 
the  great  Book  in  which  they  are  divinely  attested. 
Modern  materialistic  evolution,  which  has  plunged  the 
world  into  fratricidal  strife,  is  the  victory  of  the  strong 
over  the  weak,  the  destruction  of  the  many  that  the 
few  may  revel  in  luxury  and  self-indulgence,  and,  when 
pushed  to  its  logical  and  practical  outcome,  means  "the 
survival  of  the  greatest  brutes."  The  modern  period 
at  its  best  estate  builds  upon  the  Eefprmation  standard 
of  values :  "Destroy  not  thy  brother  for  whom  Christ 
died."  Democracy  will  never  win  against  autocracy 
unless  in  the  power  of  the  cross.  Human  brotherhood 
will  never  become  anything  more  than  an  empty  senti- 
mentality unless  the  Scriptural  standard  of  values  is 
applied  to  the  individual  units  which  make  up  that 
brotherhood. 

America  under  the  inspiration  of  this  standard  of 
human  worth  has  realized  a  religious  and  civic  well- 
being  which  has  put  her  in  the  forefront  of  the  nations 
of  the  earth.  True  Americanism  is  Biblical  principle 
applied  to  all  social  and  political  life,  and  if  it  abandons 
the  great  certitudes  from  which  it  has  sprung,  "Ichabod" 
will  be  written  over  all  its  greatness,  and  the  world's 
brightest  hope  will  vanish  away. 

At  this  time  when  the  principles  of  the  Eeformation 
in  the  realm  of  human  liberty  are  at  issue  tliroughout 
the  world,  and  our  own  country  has  gone  into  the 
struggle  to  preserve  for  itself  and  the  world  these  inesti- 
mable treasures,  it  is  of  supreme  importance  that  the 
Church  of  the  Eeformation,  in  all  its  branches,  should 


124  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

place  its  influence  solidly  behind  the  nation  and  the 
great  alliance  of  which  it  is  a  member,  that  we  may  do 
for  the  world  what  our  fathers  did  for  us  when  they 
unfurled  the  banner  of  faith  and  freedom,  and  brought 
to  birth  in  the  throes  of  battle  the  great  nation  of  which 
we  are  a  part. 


THE  SEEVICE  IX  THE  FIEST  PEESBYTERIAN 

CHUECH,  SOUTH,  WILLIAM  M.  ANDEE- 

SON,  D.D.,  PASTOE. 

The  retiring  Moderator  of  the  General  Assembly, 
John  A.  Marquis,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President  of  Coe  Col- 
lege, presided. 

The  addresses  were  delivered  by  Andrew  C.  Zenos, 
D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Historical  Theology  in  the 
McCormick  Theological  Seminary,  and  William  H. 
Black,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  formerly  Moderator  of  the  Cum- 
berland Presbyterian  Church,  President  of  Missouri 
Eiver  College. 


THE  EEFOEMEES  AS  MEN  OF  THOUGHT 
AND  ACTION 

BY 
ANDREW  C.  ZENOS,  D.D.,  LLD. 

The  man  who  is  in  the  midst  of  some  great  labor 
rarely,  if  ever,  thinks  of  the  dim  and  distant  future,  and 
of  his  o^vn  place  in  it.  He  certainly  never  pictures 
himself  as  the  hero  of  a  posterity  that  is  placing  laurel 
wreaths  upon  his  brow.  How  far  from  the  thought  of 
the  great  Eeformers  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  idea 
tliat  their  words  or  their  personalities  would  ever  become 
tlie  subjects  of  commemorative  services !  How  much 
farther  the  thought  that  in  that  new  world  of  mythical 
dimensions  and  mysterious  conditions,  of  which  they 
had  barely  heard,  a  democracy  would  be  built  such  as 
they  were  dreaming  of  in  their  best  moments!  How 
much  farther  still  the  anticipation  that  a  Church  would 
arise  framed  after  the  pattern  of  their  ideals,  a  Church 
endeavoring  in  all  respects  to  realize  in  its  doctrine  and 
organization  the  principles  of  the  New  Testament,  and 
tliat  they  themselves  would  be  given  the  credit  of  stimu- 
lating it  into  existence!  Finally,  how  far  beyond  their 
conception  was  the  thought  that  this  Church  expressing 
itself  through  its  representatives,  after  the  lapse  of  four 
full  centuries,  would  devise  and  execute  a  service  com- 
memorative of  their  work.     Marvelous,  indeed,  is  the 

127 


128  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

work  of  the  Eeformer  and  unexpected  the  form  and  the 
time  of  his  reward. 

But  what  is  a  reformer?  There  is  too  prevalent  an 
impression  in  the  mind  of  the  average  man  that  a 
reformer  is  a  malcontent  and  an  agitator^  a  man  dis- 
satisfied with  existing  conditions  and  bent  on  changing 
them.  If  it  were  necessary  to  correct  this  notion,  one 
might  point  to  the  record  of  the  men  of  whom  we  are 
now  thinking.  Surely  they  did  not  plead  for  change  for 
the  sake  of  change ;  they  were  not  restless  spirits  venting 
their  love  of  adventure  in  dashing  efforts  to  overthrow 
the  existing  order  and  establish  a  new  order.  They  were 
scholars.  Luther  was  a  common  professor  in  the  uni- 
versity; Calvin  was  a  philosopher  and  a  writer  before 
he  found  himself  forced,  against  his  will,  to  take  the 
leadership  of  a  disorganized  community,  and  give  it 
coherency  and  form.  Zwingli,  though  drawn  into  the 
whirl  of  public  life,  and  finding  it  more  congenial  to 
his  nature  than  either  Luther  or  Calvin,  was  not  essen- 
tially anything  more  than  a  student  and  a  clergyman. 
John  Knox  came  farthest  away  from  the  line  of  scholar- 
ship, but  he,  too,  loved  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  and 
cared  more  for  what  was  true  than  for  the  noise  of 
battle  and  the  smell  of  powder.  Being  scholars,  the 
Eeformers  were  not  malcontents  by  nature  and  tem- 
perament. It  was  stress  of  circumstances  rather  than 
a  native  love  of  change  that  drove  them  to  denounce  and 
attack  existing  conditions.  Luther  expressed  the 
thought  of  them  all  when  he  said,  years  after  the  open 
break  with  the  papacy,  that  had  he  known  what  it  would 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  129 

mean  when  he  first  launched  upon  the  movement,  "a 
team  of  ten  oxen  could  not  have  dragged  him  into  it" 
from  his  monastic  retirement,  his  mystic  meditations, 
and  his  quiet  studies. 

And  3^et  the  Reformers  were  discontented  with  the 
conditions  of  their  day.  Every  reformer,  by  the  very 
nature  of  his  aims  and  aspirations,  is  one  who  desires 
and  endeavors  to  refashion  the  world  ahout  him;  there- 
fore he  is  in  a  sense  a  malcontent.  But  between  the 
agitator  who  glibly  labels  himself  a  reformer  and  a 
man  of  the  type  of  Luther,  Zwingli,  Calvin,  or  Knox, 
there  is  a  vast  gulf  fixed.  The  former  strikes  right  and 
left  because  he  likes  to  see  things  topple  over  and  fall 
in  pieces;  he  is  essentially  a  radical.  The  latter  is 
essentially  a  conservative.  He  is  more  concerned  to  see 
the  heart  of  good  things  saved  from  the  corruption  that 
is  threatening  it  than  merely  to  destroy  the  apparently 
useless  things.  The  true  reformer  is  aflame  with  zeal 
for  the  healthy  and  sound  life  of  the  spirit.  He  is 
hungry  and  thirsty,  not  for  adventure  but  for  the  works 
of  love.  He  hates  what  is  eating  out  the  life  of  men 
and  women,  but  he  loves  men  and  women  more  than  he 
hates  anything.  He  forgets  himself  because  his  whole 
mental  life  is  taken  up  and  occupied  with  the  highest 
welfare  of  others. 

Let  us  see  how  this  character  of  the  true  reformer  was 
realized  in  the  lives  and  careers  of  those  whose  Avork  we 
are  commemorating.  The  group  includes  a  large  num- 
ber, each  one  of  whom  is  worthy  of  the  admiration  and 
gratitude  of  the  generations  that  have  followed  him. 


130  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

But  we  must  single  out  four  as  tlie  leaders ;  among  these, 
most  conspicuous  b}^  reason  of  the  initiative  providenti- 
ally allotted  to  him,  stands  Martin  Luther. 

Born  in  1483,  in  what  he  calls  a  peasant's  home, 
Luther  developed  a  spiritual  sensitiveness  which,  con- 
trary to  his  father's  wishes,  led  him  in  early  manhood 
to  the  religious  life.  This  was  at  the  time  identified 
with  the  monastic  system.  Step  by  step,  Luther  came 
to  realize  the  difference  between  the  ideals  put  forth 
in  the  Bible  and  the  corruption  of  the  Church  in  his 
day.  When  the  sale  of  indulgences  by  Johann  Tetzel  was 
undertaken  in  Saxony  his  sense  of  duty  was  stirred  to 
the  quick,  and  on  that  memorable  October  31,  1517,  he 
nailed  his  Ninety-five  Theses  as  a  declaration  and  a 
challenge.  The  Theses  were  ninety-five,  but  the  theme 
is  one.  Men  cannot  be  made  just  before  God  by  works 
of  any  kind,  but  by  faith  alone.  This  was  called  the 
material  principle  of  the  Eeformation. 

When  challenged  to  prove  his  contention,  Luther  first 
undertook  to  do  so  on  general  grounds.  He  found,  how- 
ever, that  this  was  a  precarious  position,  and  at  the 
disputation  held  at  Leipzig  in  1519,  he  planted  himself 
squarely  on  the  Scriptures  alone.  If  it  could  be  proved 
from  the  Bible  that  he  was  wrong,  he  would  recant, 
otherwise  he  must  abide  by  the  decision  of  the  Word 
of  God.  The  papacy  tried  excommunication  upon  him 
the  very  next  year,  but  with  no  effect.  Thus  came  into 
view  the  second  great  principle  of  the  Eeformation — 
the  sole  authority  of  the  Bible  in  religion. 

The  next  great  step  was  the  appeal  to  the  State.     At 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  131 

the  Diet  of  Worms  in  1521  Luther  was  practically  asked 
to  accept  the  interpretation  of  the  Bible  by  the  Church. 
This  he  refused  to  do.  He  claimed  the  right  for  him- 
self and  for  every  other  individual  to  read  the  Bible 
and  understand  it  in  the  light  given  by  the  Spirit  of 
God.  Thus  the  third,  though  commonly  unrecognized 
and  never  fully  realized,  principle  of  the  Eeformation 
became  operative.  For  when  Luther  faced  the  diet  with 
his  immortal  words :  "Here  I  stand,  otherwise  I  can- 
not, God  help  me,"  he  gave  expression  to  the  most  vital 
of  all  the  principles  that  were  to  influence  and  mold 
Christian  life  from  that  day  onward. 

Almost  simultaneously  in  another  portion  of  Europe 
the  same  conditions  had  led  Ulrich  Zwingli,  pastor  at 
Glarus,  Switzerland,  provoked  by  the  same  scandal  of 
the  sale  of  indulgences,  to  challenge  the  advocates  of 
the  system  to  a  discussion.  Either  because  of  local  con- 
ditions or  because  of  the  special  methods  he  used,  he 
did  not  at  first  attract  so  much  attention  as  Luther, 
although  his  positions  were  much  more  radical. 

An  effort  to  unite  these  two  independent  streams  in 
one  strong  movement  proved  futile.  But  each  gathered 
strength  and  moved  along  its  own  path.  While  that  led 
by  Luther  gained  steadily  and  occupied  the  imperial 
diets  from  1521  to  1530,  that  led  by  Zwingli  issued 
in  a  disruption  and  civil  war  in  Switzerland,  during 
which  Zwingli  lost  his  life  in  battle  and  the  reforming 
party  seemed  to  collapse. 

On  the  German  side  of  the  line,  a  stage  was  reached 
when  in  the  Diet  of  Augsburg  the  Eeformers  clearly 


132  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

and  definitely  placed  a  constructive  statement  of  their 
doctrinal  views  before  the  assembled  princes.  This  was 
a  great  gain,  but  it  did  not  satisfy  the  papal  side  and 
the  years  following  increased  the  breadth  of  the  chasm 
between  the  old  and  the  new  to  such  an  extent  that  a 
war  was  inevitable.  Fortunately,  Luther  died  before  the 
actual  outbreak  of  hostilities.  The  struggle  began  with 
the  war,  commonly  called  the  Smalkaldic,  1546-1547, 
and  continued  with  some  interruptions  until  1555,  when 
the  Eeligious  Peace  of  Augsburg  gave  Lutherans  and 
Eomanists  equal  rights  in  the  empire. 

Meanwhile,  ten  years  before  the  outbreak  of  the 
Smalkaldic  War,  John  Calvin  made  his  appearance  in 
Geneva.  He  was  almost  forcibly  drawn  into  the  strug- 
gle of  Farel  to  revive  and  infuse  permanent  life  into  the 
Zwinglian  movement.  Born  in  France,  in  1509,  Calvin 
belonged  to  the  constructive  rather  than  to  the  pioneer 
stage  of  the  great  movement.  But  from  the  time  of 
his  arrival  at  Geneva  in  1536  to  the  day  of  his  death, 
in  1564,  his  genius  and  his,  power  were  the  controlling 
factors.  He  organized  the  government  of  the  city  upon 
the  democratic  plan,  and  the  Church  according  to  the 
Presbyterian  polity;  he  reformed  the  morals  and  the 
social  life  of  the  community  and  gave  to  the  world  a 
new  interpretation  of  Christianity. 

The  human  mind  has  produced  three  world  systems 
and  only  three.  It  was  given  to  Calvin  to  work  out 
consistently  upon  Biblical  grounds  the  most  wholesome 
and  successful  system  of  the  three.    These  systems  may 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  133 

be  named  in  general  the  absolutistic,  the  individualistic, 
and  the  collectivistic. 

The  absolutistic  system  logically  means  autocracy  in 
the  State,  papacy  in  the  Church,  dogmatism  in  religious 
thought,  and  authority  in  philosophy. 

The  individualistic  system  means  anarchy  in  the  body 
politic,  irresponsible  freedom  in  the  Church,  subjectiv- 
ism in  religious  thought,  and  agnosticism  in  philosophy. 

The  collectivistic  system  is  identified  with  democracy 
in  the  State,  representative  or  presbyterian  government 
in  the  Church,  the  authority  of  the  spirit  in  religious 
thought,  and  scientific  method  in  philosophy.  The 
breadth  and  strength  of  this  system  as  constructively 
presented  to  the  world  by  Calvin  have  rendered  it  a 
universal,  international,  and  ecumenical  force,  which 
is  destined  to  control  the  life  of  mankind  in  the  future 
even  more  completely  than  it  has  during  the  four  cen- 
turies past. 

From  Geneva  John  Knox,  born  in  1505,  and  four 
years  the  senior  of  Calvin,  carried  this  new  interpreta- 
tion to  Scotland.  Here  conditions  were  ripe  for  a  rapid 
and  radical  change  in  the  thought  and  practice  of  the 
Church.  Domestic,  political,  and  social  ferment  had 
aligned  the  nobility  and  the  people  on  one  side  against 
the  clergy  and  the  crown  on  the  other.  The  struggle 
was  unequal,  though  not  without  its  episodes  and  stages. 
The  old  order  was  foredoomed  to  pass  away  and  John 
Knox  was  the  man  providentially  prepared  to  replace  it 
by  the  new.  In  the  year  15G0,  as  if  in  one  day,  the 
change  was  made,  and  the  so-called  Eeformed  Church 


134  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

was  established.  Thus  the  movement  begun  in  Witten- 
berg forty-three  years  earlier  reached  its  culmination  in 
Edinburgh.  Luther,  Zwingli,  Calvin,  Knox,  are  the 
towering  figures  in  the  great  army  of  men  whose  col- 
lective labors  rise  in  the  mind  when  the  word,  Eeforma- 
tion,  is  pronounced. 

What  significance  for  the  man  who  follows  them  at  a 
distance  of  four  hundred  years  is  to  be  attached  to  the 
personalities  and  labors  of  these  men?  What  does  it 
mean  to  us  that  they  lived  and  spoke,  toiled  and  suf- 
fered, four  centuries  ago? 

The  answer  to  these  questions  is  rich  and  manifold. 
From  among  the  thoughts  that  throng  the  mind,  let  us 
select  a  few  for  special  consideration. 

First,  the  success  given  to  the  Reformers  means  the 
triumph  of  personality  over  conditions.  These  men 
lived  and  labored  at  a  time  when  Nature,  hard  and 
exacting,  had  not  as  yet  submitted  to  the  dominance 
of  man,  her  lord  and  master,  to  the  degree  that  she 
has  yielded  since.  The  conditions  w^ere  crude  and 
simple.  Life  was  comparatively  barren  of  the  physical 
comforts  to  which  the  children  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury are  so  accustomed  as  to  take  them  for  granted. 
Becky  Sharp  says,  "It  would  be  easy — oh,  so  easy — to 
be  good  on  five  thousand  pounds  a  year."  Many  men 
feel  that  it  would  be  possible  for  them  to  work  and  to 
produce  great  world-moving  thoughts  if  only  they  could 
be  freed  from  the  hard  conditions  of  life,  if  only  they 
could  command  the  services  of  an  army  of  stenographers 
and  clerks  and  assistants,  if  only  they  could  so  arrange 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  135 

their  lives  that  they  would  not  feel  the  annoyances  of 
untoward  or  debasing  environment,  or  the  pinch  of 
poverty,  if  only  their  minds  could  be  emancipated  from 
the  necessity  of  thinking  of  what  they  shall  eat  and  what 
they  shall  drink  and  w^herewithal  they  shall  be  clothed. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  physical  life  lies  at  the 
basis  of  sound  intellectual  w^ork.  A  sound  body  in  nor- 
mally healthy  condition  is  prerequisite  to  the  best 
activities  of  the  mind  and  spirit.  But  it  is  an  error 
to  think  that  the  life  of  the  spirit  beats  with  strength 
proportionate  to  the  physical  elements  upon  which  it  is 
based  and  through  which  it  must  needs  labor  and 
express  itself.  The  work  of  the  Eeformers  is  a  stand- 
ing rebuke  to  the  materialistic  spirit  of  an  age  in  which 
the  greed  for  money,  with  all  the  facilities  it  provides 
for  all  sorts  of  activities,  has  invaded  the  very  citadel 
of  the  spiritual  life,  organized  Christianity.  Consider 
the  conditions  under  which  Luther  and  Zwingli  and 
Knox  achieved  the  triumph  of  the  spirit.  One  goes  to 
Edinburgh  and  examines  with  deepest  interest  that 
house  on  High  Street  in  wdiich  the  fiery  leader  of  the 
Scottish  Eeformation  rested  himself  during  tlie  periods 
of  intermission  between  preaching  at  St.  Gile's  Cathe- 
dral, or  visiting  Mary  at  the  Holyrood  Palace,  or  con- 
sulting with  the  members  of  Parliament,  and  one  is 
amazed  at  the  simplicity  and  barrenness  of  the  estab- 
lishment. Can  it  be  that  such  a  rich  life  was  lived  in 
such  unhelpful  surroundings?  One  goes  to  the  Wart- 
burg  and  is  shown  the  room  in  which  Luther  translated 
the  New  Testament  into  the  rugged  vernacular  German 


136  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

in  which  it  survives  to  the  present  day,  and  one  is 
fascinated  by  the  quaint  disposition  of  details  and  over- 
awed by  the  remembrance  of  the  great  ideas  which  once 
found  their  local  habitation  in  the  little  room.  But, 
on  second  thought,  one  is  amazed  that  such  power 
should  have  been  associated  with  such  insignificant  out- 
ward concomitants. 

But  amazement  is  not  in  place.  The  facts  of  the 
lives  of  these  great  souls  should  once  and  forever  burn 
the  conviction  into  our  hearts  that  circumstances  are 
nothing  but  plastic  clay  in  the  hands  of  the  mighty 
spirit.  When  the  inner  man,  whose  springs  of  life  are 
from  God  arises  in  his  might,  he  is  a  Samson  whom  the 
cords  of  unfavorable  conditions  cannot  restrain  or  hold 
bound. 

Of  the  four  great  Eeformers  who  are  for  the  moment 
occupying  our  attention,  not  one  lived  to  the  full  meas- 
ure of  a  well-rounded  human  life  upon  earth.  If  the 
psalmist's  "threescore  years  and  ten"  be  the  typical  life- 
time, then  Luther  came  short  by  seven  full  years,  Cal- 
vin by  fifteen,  Knox  by  three,  and  Zwingli  by  twenty- 
three,  when  he  died  in  battle  at  the  age  of  forty-seven. 
Eegardless  of  rules  of  hygiene,  forgetful  of  everything 
but  the  task  that  was  set  before  them,  they  were  willing 
to  spend  and  be  spent.  Unmindful  of  its  passing,  they 
kept  the  candle  of  life  burning  brightly,  bent  only  on 
its  shedding  light  as  it  burned  in  a  benighted  world. 
Their  constitutions  were  undoubtedly  injured  by  the 
hard  strain  put  upon  them  through  unceasing  labors. 
If  they  were  not  called  upon  like  those  heroes  of  old  to 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  137 

"Meet  the  tyrant's  brandished  steel, 
The  lion's  gory  mane," 

they  were  just  as  really  conquerors  over  hardships  and 
difficulties,  before  which  few  muster  up  the  courage  to 
stand. 

There  is  a  social  philosophy  preached  to-day  according 
to  which  the  ills  of  mankind  are  due  to  economic  con- 
ditions. If  these  conditions  were  made  ideal  the  mil- 
lennium would  come  automatically.  Poverty  is  the 
cause  of  ignorance,  disease,  and  sin.  Eemove  poverty 
and  men  would  be  lifted  to  a  high  intellectual  level. 
Without  for  a  moment  minimizing  the  importance  of 
rendering  conditions  as  nearly  ideal  as  possible,  the 
course  of  the  Reformers  shows  the  need  of  redeemed 
personality  before  conditions  can  be  changed.  Luther 
is  sometimes  censured  because  in  the  peasants'  uprising 
he  did  not  throw  his  sympathy  and  influence  on  the 
side  of  the  downtrodden  peasants.  On  the  face  of  it,  it 
must  be  admitted  that  his  conduct  fails  to  measure  up  to 
the  best  Christian  ideals  of  this  later  day.  But  con- 
sidered from  the  viewpoint  of  a  true  Christian  philos- 
ophy, his  instinct  was  accurate.  It  was  necessary  to 
have  a  people  awakened  to  spiritual  realities  before 
industrial  conditions  could  be  adequately  treated.  "Seek 
ye  first  his  kingdom,  and  his  righteousness;  and  all 
these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you."  It  was  much 
more  important  to  strike  at  the  root  of  the  tree  than 
to  deal  with  the  trunk  outwardly,  much  more  effective 
to  deal  with  the  spiritual  forces,  unentangled  with 
external  conditions,  than  to  lose  the  essence  of  things 


138  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

in  the  effort  to  make  applications  in  detail.  The  sal- 
vation of  men  not  only  may,  but  must,  precede  the 
change  of  conditions.  The  supreme  need  in  reforma- 
tion is  not  the  creation  of  conditions  favorable  to  the 
change,  but  of  characters  that  will  create  the  condi- 
tions. 

Secondly,  the  Eeformers  mean  to  us  the  triumph  of 
personality  over  social  mechanism,  of  spirit  over  insti- 
tutions, of  freedom  over  efficiency.  Great  is  the  power 
of  organization,  and  our  day  seems  to  have  awakened 
to  a  consciousness  of  this  profoundly  significant  fact  in 
the  world.  Cooperation  accomplishes  vastly  more  than 
scattered  individual  effort.  Teamwork,  whether  on  the 
ball  field,  or  as  a  coordinated  movement  on  the  battle 
front,  assures  victory  over  forces  that  are  divided,  no 
matter  how  far  superior  in  other  respects.  A  perfect 
machine,  whether  military  or  ecclesiastical,  seems  to  be 
the  goal  of  the  ambition  of  large  groups  of  men,  and 
efficiency  has  been  chosen  as  the  motto — the  magic  wand 
to  conjure  with.  To  all  of  this  a  man  of  the  present 
day  would  be  purblind  to  say  an  unqualified  nay. 

But  one  need  not  turn  his  eyes  away  from  the  origins 
of  the  New  Testament  to  find  due  emphasis  laid  on 
thorough  organization.  The  original  preacher  of  co- 
operative movement  in  order  to  efficiency  was  the  Apos- 
tle Paul.  Eead  his  wonderful  parable  of  the  Body  and 
the  Members.  "For  as  the  body  is  one,  and  hath  many 
members,  and  all  the  members  of  the  body,  being  many, 
are  one  body;  so  also  is  Christ."  "They  are  many 
members,  but  one  body."     Nothing  has  been  said  in 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  139 

behalf  of  efficiency  by  organized  cooperation  more  com- 
pactly, more  practically,  and  more  forcibly,  than  has 
been  said  by  the  Apostle  Paul  in  that  matchless  simile. 

But  the  difference  between  the  apostle's  plea  for 
organized  cooperation  and  the  present-day  anvil  chorus 
on  the  same  subject  is  that  Paul  was  thinking  of  organi- 
zation designed  to  advance  the  life  of  the  spirit.  Modern 
advocates  of  cooperation  have  in  mind  economy  and 
abundant  results.  We  are  in  danger  of  enthroning  a 
new  goddess  in  our  pantheon,  the  goddess  of  efficiency, 
and  of  falling  down  and  worshiping  her,  irrespective  of 
the  cause  or  causes  to  be  observed. 

The  Eeformers  with  keen  instinct  had  seized  upon 
the  supremacy  of  the  spirit.  They  fought  a  battle 
against  the  most  powerful  organization  that,  up  to  their 
time,  the  world  had  ever  allowed  to  be  completed.  The 
papal  system,  patterned  after  the  model  of  Imperial 
Eome,  had  growm  through  centuries,  fitting  part  into 
part,  member  into  member,  in  complete  and  perfect 
subordination.  Emperors  from  the  days  of  Henry  IV, 
who  ignominiously  bent  his  knees  at  Canossa,  and 
through  the  days  of  Barbarossa  and  the  greater  Fred- 
erick II,  had  striven  with  all  their  might  to  break  this 
papal  power  and  had  found  it  invincible.  When  a  man 
grew  overly  ambitious,  when  the  lust  for  power  entered 
his  heart,  as  it  did  into  the  Medici  of  Florence,  all  he 
had  to  do  was  to  insinuate  himself  into  this  system,  and 
to  rise  step  by  step  to  a  seat  of  command.  Thence  he 
could  control  the  world.  When  Eodrigo  Borgia,  the 
infamous  Alexander  VI,  was  elected  to  the  papac}^  he 


140  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

exclaimed,  "Xow  I  am  po23e,  now  I  can  rule  the  world." 
This  wonderful  mechanism  bade  fair  to  be  the  rock 
against  which  whosoever  struck  was  destined  to  be 
dashed  to  pieces,  and  on  whomsoever  it  fell,  it  seemed 
as  if  he  must  be  ground  to  powder.  John  Huss,  Jerome, 
and  Savonarola  were  crushed  by  it.  It  was  the  ideal  of 
efficiency  as  an  organized  institution.  What  should  man 
do  to  it  or  with  it? 

But  no !  Luther  and  Calvin,  Zwingli  and  Knox, 
proved  that  there  is  a  greater  power  than  that  of  the 
most  compact  machine  the  world  has  ever  known — the 
power  of  the  spirit,  of  the  spirit  of  man  possessed  and 
controlled  and  directed  by  the  Spirit  of  God.  The 
incredible  came  to  pass.  The  gigantic  image  was  struck 
at  the  feet  by  the  stone  not  hewn  with  hands,  and  the 
image  crumbled  and  fell.  A  few  men,  and  they  work- 
ing independently,  accomplished  the  miracle. 

Let  no  one  point  doubtfully  to  the  more  recent  Mod- 
ernist movement  in  the  Roman  fold  and  claim  that 
freedom  is  impotent  against  the  efficient  machine.  The 
difficulty  with  Modernism  was  that  it  lacked  the  power 
of  personality.  It  was  not  a  movement  for  the  freedom 
of  the  spirit  as  a  product  of  evolution.  Let  Modern- 
ism revive  as  a  movement  of  the  spirit,  let  personality 
be  placed  at  its  center,  and  its  warfare  against  ecclesi- 
astical machinery  is  bound  to  succeed.  Are  we  asked 
how  this  is  to  be  accomplished,  when  the  machine  by 
its  inexorable  operation  automatically  eliminates  every 
disturbing  factor?  Our  answer  is,  we  do  not  know. 
The  inevitable  element  in  such  conflicts  and  their  issues 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  141 

is  the  element  of  surprise.  No  one  could  have  fore- 
seen that  Luther  and  Calvin,  Zwingli  and  Knox,  would 
triumph  where  Wjclif  and  Huss  and  Savonarola  had 
failed;  yet  that  is  precisely  what  happened.  The  ways 
of  the  Spirit  are  mysterious,  hut  his  achievements  are 
sure;  and  his  victory  is  all  the  more  certain  because  the 
path  he  follows  is  unpredictable.  Let  us  be  men  of  the 
Spirit,  dauntless  and  strong,  assured  that  the  victory 
is  ours  if  we  faint  not  nor  falter. 

Thirdly,  the  course  of  the  Eeformers  demonstrates 
the  triumph  of  the  fear  of  God  over  the  fear  of  man, 
of  the  Spirit  over  tradition  and  statute.  Luther  and 
Zwingli,  Calvin  and  Knox,  are  reputed  men  of  courage 
to  have  dared  what  they  did.  But  courage  in  their  case 
was  only  another  name  for  that  holy  fear  of  God  which 
swallows  all  other  fears.  It  is  doubtful  whether  Luther's 
personal  courage  would  have  carried  him  as  far  as  it  did 
had  it  not  been  suffused  and  tempered  by  the  regard  he 
had  for  the  will  of  God.  Iron  in  its  purity  is  hard, 
but  it  is  brittle.  Add  to  it  certain  other  ingredients 
under  high  temperature  and  it  becomes  steel.  Luther 
fac.ed  the  Diet  of  Worms  on  the  afternoon  of  April  17, 
1521.  On  the  journey  he  had  prepared  himself  as  well 
as  a  man  could,  but  as  he  gazed  upon  the  assemblage 
of  magnates  his  heart  sank  within  him.  When  the  ques- 
tion was  put  to  him  whether  he  would  recant  his  views 
as  contained  in  tlie  l)Ooks  he  had  published,  of  which 
copies  had  been  provided,  he  answered  in  a  low,  almost 
inaudible  voice:  He  seemed  to  be  on  the  point  of  col- 
lapse.   He  said  it  w^as  a  serious  question,  and  he  ought 


142  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

to  have  time  to  consider  it.  He  was  given  until  the 
next  day.  He  went  to  his  lodgings  and  engaged  in 
prayer.  The  next  day  he  faced  the  same  assemblage. 
The  same  question  was  asked  him.  His  natural  timidity 
had  disappeared.  He  had  seen  God — what  terror  could 
the  fear  of  man  have  for  him? 

John  Knox's  unflinching  stand  before  Mary,  Queen 
of  Scots  is  very  well  known.  It  amjazed  his  contem- 
poraries. To  him  it  was  nothing  more  than  the  ordi- 
nary duty  of  a  man  who  had  learned  to  regard  the  will 
of  God  as  the  supreme  rule  of  his  conduct. 

This  feature  of  the  Eeformers'  minds  explains  their 
attitude  to  the  Bible  on  the  one  hand  and  to  tradition 
on  the  other.  The  motto,  "The  Bible,  the  only  religion 
of  Protestants,"  has  become  so  familiar  in  the  present 
age  that  the  difficulty  of  setting  it  forth  and  vindicating 
it  is  not  easily  realized.  Yet  it  was  inexpressibly  hard 
to  break  the  power  of  tradition  and  revert  to  the  foun- 
tainhead  of  authority  for  light  on  faith  and  conduct. 
Tradition  is  a  tremendous  power.  It  accumulates  force 
as  it  moves.  It  thickens  and  hardens  every  moment.  It 
is  like  some  evil  habit  which  a  man  contracts  and  which 
he  finds  impossible  to  give  up.  Tradition  is  a  pres- 
sure that  prescribes  the  course  of  the  individual  and 
compels  him  to  move  within  certain  fixed  bounds.  It  is 
an  atmosphere  that  must  be  breathed,  a  stream  that 
carries  all  upon  its  bosom.  It  requires  strength  to  cut 
loose  from  any  tradition.  The  tradition  of  the  Medieval 
Church  was  stronger  than  ordinary  traditions,  because 
it  came  under  the  name  and  with  the  sanction  of  the 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  143 

Word  of  God.  To  cut  loose  from  tradition  was  first  of  */ 
all  to  realize  that  the  will  of  God  was  something  other 
than  the  body  of  precepts  and  maxims  handed  down  by 
tradition  in  the  Church.  To  realize  this  in  one's  own 
mind  first,  then  to  proclaim  it  in  such  a  way  that  others 
should  believe  it — this  required  strength  of  character 
possible  only  to  the  man  of  the  Spirit. 

Sabatier  has  given  us  a  book  in  which  he  contrasts 
the  religions  of  authority  with  the  religion  of  the  Spirit. 
So  far  as  the  Reformers  were  concerned,  the  authority 
they  recognized  was  the  sole  authority  of  the  Spirit. 
Being  men, of  the  Spirit,  they  committed  themselves  to 
it  absolutely  and  unconditionally.  In  the  Bible  they 
recognized  the  supreme  expression  of  the  will  of  the 
Spirit.  The  antithesis  between  Spirit  and  authority 
does  not  exist  for  those  who  commit  themselves  to  the 
guidance  of  the  Spirit. 

The  triumph  of  the  fear  of  God  means  the  vindi-  i^ 
cation  of  the  venture  of  faith.  In  the  realm  of  the 
Spirit  true  safety  lies  in  taking  risks.  Faith  is  the 
key  word  of  the  Eeformation,  in  more  than  one  sense. 
It  is  first  the  key  word  of  its  doctrinal  system  as  given 
in  the  phrase,  justification  by  faith.  It  is  also  the 
key  word  of  the  life  of  its  leading  spirits.  Faith  to  them 
was  more  than  a  theological  term.  It  was  more  even 
than  the  act  of  appropriating  the  offer  of  salvation  from 
the  hands  of  God.  It  was  an  act  of  commitment  to  the 
guidance  of  God.  Like  Abraham,  the  Reformers 
launched  upon  their  bold  course  as  travelers  not  know- 


144  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

ing  whither  they  went.  Each  of  them  might  rightly 
have  made  his  own  the  words  of  Paracelsus : 

"I  go  to  prove  my  soul, 
I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless  way. 
I  shall  arrive — ^what  time,  what  circuit  first, 
I  ask  not;  but  unless  God  send  his  hail 
Or  blinding  fire-balls,  sleet  or  stifling  snow, 
In  some  time,  his  good  time,  I  shall  arrive: 
He  guides  me  and  the  bird.     In  his  good  time." 

When  Luther  launched  out  upon  this  venture  of  faith 
there  was  no  lack  of  indication  that  he  would  incur  the 
apparently  omnipotent  hatred  of  the  papacy.  The  grim 
examples  of  Huss  and  Savonarola  lay  before  him  like 
forbidding  danger  signals  on  the  path.  When  Calvin 
committed  himself  to  the  new  interpretation  of  Chris- 
tianity, Francis  I  was  holding  the  reins  of  government 
in  France  with  a  stern  determination  to  maintain  the 
unity  of  his  realm  by  suppressing  the  reformed  views, 
even  though  he  might  to  that  end  shed  the  blood  of 
thousands  of  his  best  subjects.  John  Knox  threw  him- 
self into  the  movement  in  the  face  of  the  recent  mar- 
tyrdom of  Patrick  Hamilton  and  George  Wishart. 
Luther,  Calvin,  Knox,  saw  their  way  in  those  days  of 
hail  and  sleet  and  stifling  snow  and  blinding  fireballs 
as  birds  see  their  trackless  Ava}^  But  they  believed  in 
the  guidance  of  Him  who  directs  the  bird,  and  they 
arrived.  So  shall  it  be  with  the  man  of  faith  always 
and  everywhere.  He  will  arrive.  Whether  soon,  in  his 
own  earthly  lifetime,  or  later,  when  he  himself  has  won 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  145 

his  victor's  crown  of  gold,  in  God's  good  time  he  will 
arrive. 

Finalty,  the  holy  fear  of  God  as  a  principle  of  action 
for  the  individual  led  the  Eeformers  to  a  conception 
of  the  State  in  which  theocracy  and  democracy  blend 
into  harmony  and  dethrone  autocracy.  Just  as  in  the 
Church,  under  the  full  functioning  of  this  fundamental 
reformation,  the  priest  disappears,  because  every  man 
becomes  his  own  priest,  so  in  the  State,  under  the  same 
conditions,  the  king  is  antiquated  and  ready  to  become 
an  ornamental  relic  of  bygone  ideal,  or  to  vanish  utterly 
from  life.  True  democracy,  in  which  each  citizen  has 
realized  his  ideal  relation  to  the  Source  of  all  authority, 
the  voice  of  God  in  his  conscience,  is  the  real  theocracy, 
the  rule  of  God.  And  when  this  has  been  said,  we  come 
to  the  point  where  the  labors  of  the  Reformers  affiliate 
with  the  preaching  of  Jesus  regarding  the  Kingdom  of 
God. 

Four  hundred  years  lie  between  the  Eeformers  and 
ourselves.  But  their  problems  and  ours  are  not  essen- 
tially different.  The  chief  fact  of  importance  is  that 
they  found  the  key  to  the  solution  of  the  problems. 
That  key  resolves  itself  into  two  principles :  First,  that 
reformation  is  progress  by  reversion  to  and  fulfillment 
of  preexisting  ideals;  second,  that  the  ideals  underlying 
all  sound  progress  have  been  given  by  God  himself  in 
his  self-revelation  in  the  Bible  and  Jesus  Christ,  his  Son. 
The  first  shows  the  Eeformers  to  be  true  progressives. 
Progress  is  not  to  be  found  in  reconstruction  by  demoli- 
tion.   That  is  a  purely  mechanical  process.    True  prog- 


146  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

ress  is  a  vital  growth.  It  follows  the  law  of  life  which 
always  goes  back  to  an  already  existing  element  full  of 
potentialities  and  develops  these  out  of  it.  It  is  the 
remnant  that  is  saved  in  order  to  grow  and  fulfill  the 
ideal. 

The  second  principle  is  even  more  important.  All 
reformation  must  insist  on  conformity  to  the  known 
will  of  God;  and  God  has  not  left  himself  without  tes- 
timony. Only  as  men  realize  that  the  supreme  good  is 
to  be  found  in  God's  will  as  revealed  in  his  Word  will 
they  be  worthy  successors  of  the  Eeformers,  who  were 
themselves  the  successors  of  the  apostles  and  prophets 
and  of  Jesus  Christ. 


THE  PEOTESTANT  EEFORMATION  AND  THE 
CHEISTIAN  LIFE 


WILLIAM  H.  BLACK,  D.D„  LL.D. 

In  a  general  way,  the  influence  of  the  Eeformation 
may  be  stated  as  the  achievements  and  the  reactions  of 
Protestantism.  It  must  be  clearly  seen  that  Protestant- 
ism is  not  only  an  influence  by  direct  action  in  carrying 
out  the  original  impulse  of  the  Reformation,  but  that 
its  reactions  upon  itself,  and  upon  others  not  directly 
concerned  about  the  Eeformation,  have  been  great. 
These,  if  we  had  time  to  trace  them,  could  be  shown  in 
the  influence  of  Protestantism  upon  the  State,  upon 
the  social  order,  upon  literature  and  art,  upon  indus- 
tries, and  upon  religion. 

Protestantism  is  not  a  dogma,  or  a  theological  theory,^ 
or  a  constructive  principle  of  religious  thinking;  it  is 
primarily  a  life.  It  is  a  life  that  is  lived  by  faith  in 
the  Son  of  God.  It  may  be  expressed  in  the  language 
of  the  Apostle  Paul,  as  follows:  "That  life  which  I 
now  live  in  the  flesh  I  live  in  faith,  the  faith  which  is  in 
the  Son  of  God."  The  Eeformation  shibboleth,  "justifi- 
cation by  faith,"  was  not  simply  a  theory  of  theology; 
it  was  preeminently  a  demand  for  a  certain  type  of  life, 
the  life  that  is  "just,"  and  "just"  because  it  is  the 
expression  of  a  vital  faith  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

147 


148  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

Three  things,  therefore,  follow  with  reference  to  the 
Protestant  life. 

^  1.  Protestantism  is  a  really  catholic  life.  It  must 
be  noted  that  the  protest  of  the  Eeformation  was  against 
a  merely  formal  Christianity.  It  is  not  a  life  of  legerde- 
main, i.  e.,  by  the  laying  on  of  hands,  baptisms,  con- 
fessions, and  indulgences,  but  a  life  that  begins  in 
Christ  and  is  lived  for  Christ.  It  touches  all  forms  of 
life,  civil,  social,  religious,  intellectual,  aesthetic,  indus- 
trial, ecclesiastical.  It  would  be  interesting  to  take  each 
of  these  and  show  the  catholic  form  of  the  life  ex- 
pressed in  all  these  various  relationships.  The  humani- 
ties were  basal  in  the  scholastic  status  which  preceded 
the  Reformation,  and  the  universal  human  interest  be- 
came paramount  in  the  life  of  Protestantism. 

^  2.  Protestantism  is  an  idealistic  life.  Seated  in  the 
mind  of  Protestants  as  the  ^^chiefest  among  ten  thou- 
sand,'' the  One  "altogether  lovely,''  is  Jesus  Christ.  He 
is  the  matchless,  the  divine,  the  spiritual.  Enthroned 
in  the  life,  he  is  the  determining  cause  of  spiritual 
activity.  He  is,  therefore,  in  Protestantism  the  very  soul 
of  government,  religion,  industry,  knowledge,  and  art. 
"Whom  not  having  seen  ye  love."  It  is  the  invisible; 
potential,  ever-present  Christ,  who  is  the  expression  of 
hope  and  joy  of  the  Protestant's  life.  If  time  allowed 
it  would  be  interesting,  also,  to  follow  this  into  the  de- 
tails of  its  application  under  Protestant  influence. 
^3.  Protestantism  is  a  democratic  life.  It  aims  to 
voice  and  articulate  the  spiritual  longings,  aspirations, 
and  motives  of  Christ,  and  of  all  who  have  Christ  formed 


THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION  149 

in  their  hearts,  "the  hope  of  glory."  Luther's  demo- 
cratic principles  called  for  a  vernacular  translation  of 
the  Bible,  so  that  the  very  language  of  the  spiritual  life 
should  not  be  foreign  and  formal  and  cold,  but  native 
to  the  heart  which  experienced  Christ's  presence  and 
power.  Never  in  the  history  of  the  world  had  religion 
been  brought  so  close  to  humanity  and  each  individual 
stimulated  to  such  self-assertion  and  self-expression 
as  under  the  Protestant  regime. 

It  is  an  interesting  thing  to  observe  that  for  a  thou- 
sand years  Eome  had  tried  to  express  the  spiritual  life 
and  emotions  through  the  Latin  language  but  had  failed. 
Heine  makes  this  point  clear.  It  required  a  Martin 
Luther  and  the  Protestant  Eeformation,  and  great  lead- 
ers like  Wyclif,  Knox,  Calvin,  and  Zwingli,  to  put  the 
language  of  Hebrew  prophets  and  of  Christian  apostles 
into  the  language  of  the  people,  thereby  democratizing 
religion,  revelation,  and  godly  living. 

Freytag  says  that  "there  was  no  one  to  take  Luther^s 
place"  in  Germany  and  that,  therefore,  the  democracy 
of  Luther  never  became  seated  in  the  German  Empire. 
It  is  one  of  the  tragedies  of  history  that  the  birthplace 
of  modern  democracy  has  not  been  the  place  of  its 
greatest  victories.  It  is  the  marvel  of  history  that 
America  was  not  discovered  until  just  at  the  time  of 
the  breaking  out  of  the  Eeformation,  so  that  there  was 
a  field  waiting  in  which  the  principles  of  the  new  vision 
might  be  worked  out  for  the  benefit  of  humanity. 
America  became  the  Mecca  of  freedom  for  all  peoples, 
kindreds,  and  tongues,  and  with  the  democratic  religious 


150  THE    PROTESTANT    REFORMATION 

ideals  of  Protestantism,  it  became,  therefore,  the  theater 
of  the  reconstruction  of  human  thinking  and  human 
institutions.  After  the  exemplification  of  Protestant 
democratic  freedom  had  been  worked  into  form  in 
America,  it  spread  to  other  nations,  and  the  recent  great 
democratic  movements  may  be  traced  to  the  exemplari- 
ness  of  America.  The  war  has  shown  in  a  most  singular 
way  that  Germany  is  still  under  despotic  power,  that 
Austria-Hungary  is  not  a  government  of  the  people,  and 
that  Turkey  is  under  no  movement  for  the  restoration 
of  the  interests  of  humanity;  but  democracy  has  had  a 
place  in  the  sun  in  every  nation  that  is  fighting  against 
these  central  powers.  Britain,  Belgium,  France,  Italy, 
Russia,  and  America,  have  moved  with  the  greatest 
democracy  in  the  planning  and  execution,  and  in  the 
motive  and  end,  of  their  terrific  bombardments,  sacri- 
fices, and  achievements. 

The  democracy  of  Protestantism  needed  this  great 
war.  England  needed  it  in  order  to  level  the  class  dis- 
tinctions that  prevailed;  France  needed  it  in  order  to 
the  spiritualizing  of  her  government,  institutions,  and 
life;  Eussia  needed  it  in  order  to  break  the  power  of 
the  despotism  which  had  held  her  for  so  long;  America 
needed  it  in  order  to  set  her  free  from  the  dominance 
of  economic  and  industrial  ideals  which  were  obscuring 
the  spiritual  forms  native  to  her  national  beginnings. 

"None  of  us  liveth  to  himself,  and  none  dieth  to  him- 
self, but  whether  we  live  therefore,  or  die,  we  are  the 
Lord's."  This  great  apostolic  vision  is  having  a  new 
birth  in  these  days  of  strife  and  blood. 


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